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I 



THE AUTHORSHIP 
OF THE BOOK OF 
DEUTERONOMY 

VITH ITS BEARINGS ON THE HIGHER 
CRITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH 



JOHN WILUAM McGARVEY, LL. D., 

President of the College of the Bible, Lexington, Ky. ; Professor of 
Sacred History and Christian Evidences in same ; Author of 
"Text and Canon of the New Testament;'* "Credi- 
bility and Inspiration of the New Testament ; ** 
** Lands of the Bible ; *^ and Commentaries on 
Matthew, Mark, and Acts of Apostles. 



CINCINNATI, O. 

THE STANDARD PUBLISHING CO., 

2)6-220 East Ninth Street. 



THE LIBRA!^Y ©F 

Two CCM»!B6 ftECElVt» 

WAR 3! 1902 

ICC.4S8 <l^ XXc ^io. 
COPY a 



"BS\2.n5 



Copyright, 1902, by 
The Standard Publishing Co. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

§1. Apology for Writing iii. 

§2. Higher Criticism Defined iii. 

§3. The Analytical Theory of the Pentateuch vii. 

§4. The Suspicious Source of This Theory xv. 

§5. The Unbelieving Tendency of It xvii. 

§6. The Relation of Deuteronomy to This Theory xix. 

§7. The Plan of This Work xx. 

§8. Authorities and Abbreviations xxi. 

PART FIRST. 

evidences for the late date assigned to DEUTERONOMY. 

§1. From the Account of the Book Found by Hilkiah 1 

§2. From Alleged Conflicts vv^ith Previous Legislation 28 

§3. From the Early Disregard of a Central Sanctuary 34 

§4. From the Alleged Absence of the Aaronic Priesthood 49 

§5. From Alleged Contradictions 54 

1. As to the Financial Condition of the Levites 55 

2. As to Tithes 63 

3. As to the Priest's Portion of the Peace-ofCering 67 

4. As to the Sacrifices of the Passover 68 

5. As to Eating that Which Died of Itself 69 

6. As to Hebrew Bondservants 71 

7. As to the Decalogue 78 

8. As to Acts of Moses at Mount Sinai 83 

9. As to the Mission of the Twelve Spies 88 

10. As to the Time Spent at Kadesh 91 

11. As to When the Levites were Consecrated 94 

12. As to the Sentence on Moses 95 

13. As to the Asylum for the Manslayer 97 

14. As to the Year or Release 99 

15. As to Eating the Firstlings 100 

16. As to a Fragment of the Wilderness Itinerary 104 

§6. Internal Evidence for the Late Date 106 

1. From the Expression, "Beyond Jordan" 106 

2. From Passages Implying Dates Long After the Events 112 

3. From Differences Between Laws 115 

4. The Date of the Blessing and Cursing, the Song of Moses, and 

His Blessing of the Tribes 125 

§7. Evidences for the Late Date in the Historical Books 137 

1. Joshua and Chronicles Set Aside 137 



2 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

2. The Confession of Nehemiah and the Levites 139 

3. Religion in the Time of the Judges 141 

4. The Service at Shiloh 144 

5. Offerings Made by Saul and David 152 

6. The Priesthood of David's Sons 153 

7. Solomon's Career 155 

8. Foreign Guards in the Sanctuary 160 

9. The Toleration of High Places 165 

§8. Evidences from the Early Prophets 168 

1. From Elijah and Elisha 169 

2. From the Prophet Amos 171 

3. From the Prophet Hosea 175 

4. From the Book of Isaiah 180 

5. From a Passage in Micah 182 

6. From the Prophet Jeremiah 184 

§9. Evidence from Style 190 

PART SECOND. 

evidences for the mosaic authorship. 

§1. Internal Evidence 195 

1. From the Title of the Book 1^5 

2. From the Preface to the Second Discourse 197 

3. From Directions as to the Ceremony at Mt. Ebal 197 

4. From the Preface to the Covenant 198 

5. From Assertions About the Writing 198 

6. From the Preface to the Song and to the Blessing 199 

§2. Indirect Testimony of the Author 200 

1. Constant Allusions to Entering Canaan as Yet Future 202 

§3. Incidental Evidence 202 

1. The Decree Against Amalek 202 

2. The Order to Exterminate the Canaanites 203 

3. The Order Respecting Ammon, Moab and Edom 204 

4. The Predictions in the Book 205 

§4. The Question of Fraud 209 

1. The Charge Preferred 209 

2. The Charge Admitted 210 

3. The Charge Denied 212 

§5. Evidence in the Book of Joshua 218 

1. Jehovah's Charge to Joshua 218 

2. The Case of the Altar Ed 220 

3. The Devoted in Jericho 223 

4. The Altar and Reading at Mt. Ebal 225 

5. The Doom of the Gibeonites 226 

6. The Cities of Refuge 227 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 

7. The Levitical Cities 228 

tjG. Evidence in the Book of Judges 229 

1. The Angel at Bochim 229 

2. The Nazirite Vow 230 

3. Peace-offerings 232 

4. Micah's Levite Priest 233 

§7. In the Books of Samuel 236 

1. The Structure at Shiloh 236 

2. The Contents of the Structure at Shiloh 237 

3. The Existence of the Tabernacle Denied 239 

4. The Ritual Observed at Shiloh 242 

§8. In the Books of Kings 244 

1. Solomon's Temple 244 

2. The Service at the Temple 246 

3. The Exclusiveness of the Temple Service 247 

4. The Toleration of High Places 248 

5. Hezekiah's Attack on the High Places 249 

6. The Testimony Given to Joash 251 

7. Sparing the Children of Murderers 252 

§9. In the Books of the Early Prophets 253 

1. In the Book of Amos 253 

(1) His Opening Cry 253 

(2) What He Meant by the Law 254 

(3) His Knowledge of the Levitical Law 255 

2. Hosea 256 

3. Isaiah 256 

(1) An Allusion to Deut. xviii. 10-12 256 

(2) An Allusion to Deut. xviii. 19, 20 257 

(3) The Law, the Ordinance, and the Covenant. 258 

(4) Restricted Worship 259 

(5) The Commandment of Men 261 

(6) Sacrifices Exalted 261 

(7) Magnifying the Law 262 

(8) Neglect of Sacrifices Rebuked 262 

(9) Blessedness of Future Sacrifices , 262 

§10. The Testimony of Jesus 264 

1. Positions of the Parties on This Testimony 264 

2. Did Jesus Know? 266 

3. Did Jesus Affirm? 269 

4. The New Critics on This Testimony 281 

5. Did the Apostles Affirm? 294 

§11. Conclusion 296 

Index 299 

Index II. — Scripture References 301 



THE AUTHOESIIIP OF DEUTEROJl^OMY. 



IJ^TRODUCTION. 

§1. Apology i<'oit Writing. 

If an apology were needed for calling in question tlie con- 
clusion of those scholars who deny that Moses was the author 
of tlie Book of Deuteronomy, it is furnished by thei&e scholar* 
themselves. They constantly insist that men of thought should 
hold their most cheirished convictions subject to revision. They 
denounce as unreasoning traditionalists those who, rejecting 
further investigation, cling tenaciously to old beliefs. They 
are the last men, therefore, w'ho should object to any fresh re-ex- 
amination of their o^vn conclusions. They would thus be imi- 
tating those whose unwillingneiss to hear them excites their dis- 
pleasure. In no conclusion are these scholars more confident 
than in the one just mentioned ; and if I shall appear to them 
exceedingly rash in publis:hing at this late date an attempt to 
show that it is erroneous, they are still bound by their own 
principles not to condemn me without a hearing. If I shall not 
advance anything new, I may at least place old arguments and 
evidences in a form somewhat new ; and I may be able to point 
cut some defects in their work that have hitherto escaped their 
notice. I have a right, therefore, to expect among the most in- 
terested and appreciative of my readers those whose opinions 
I am constrained to combat — provided only that my work shall 
prove A\^rthy the attention of serious men. I did not enter 
upon it hastily, but after an earnest study of the ^vhole field o/ 
controversy for many years. 

§2. Higher Criticism Defined. 

The process by which the scholars referi^ to in the pre- 
ceding section have reached their conclusions, is commonly 
styled The Higher Criticism. This title distinguishes it 

Ui 



iv INTRODUCTION, 

from "Textual Criticism/' or tlie discoveiry and correct! oai of 
clerical errors in tlie original text. Strictly defined, higher 
criticism is the art of ascertaining the authorship, date, credibil- 
ity and literary characteristics of written documents.-^ It is a 
legitimate art, and it has been employed by Biblical scholars 
ever since the need of such investigations began to be realized. 
Only, however, within the last hundred years has it borne thh 
title. ^ Previously both the textual and the higher criticism 
were kno'^vu under the common title, "Biblical Criticism." It 
scarcely needs to be added that the exclusive use of the title 
Higher Criticism for that application of it which seeiks to 
revolutionize established beliefs in reference to the Bible, is 
erroneous : as is also the tacit claim of some advocates of these 
revolutionary efforts to the exclusive title of higher critics.^ 
All confusion in the use of these terms will be avoided if the 
definition just given is kept in mind. 

This definition will be better understood if we add to it 
a statement of the method in which the inquiries of the art are 
properly conducted. This method is well defined by Prof. W. 
Robertson Smith in these words: "The ordinary laws of evi- 
dence and good sense must be our guides. For the transmission 
of the Bible is not due tO' a continued miracle, but. to a watch- 
ful Providence ruling the ordinary means by w'hich all ancient 
books have been handed doAvn. And finally, when we have 

Mt is defined by Prof. W. H. Green in these words: "Properly- 
speaking, it is an inquiry into the origin and character of the writings 
to which it is applied. It seeks to ascertain by all suitable means 
the authors by whom, the time at which, the circumstances under 
which, and the design with which they were produced" (Higher 
Grit, of Pent., Preface, v.). He omits credibility, and the literary 
characteristics. 

^ Johann Gotfried Eichhorn, author of a very learned Introduc- 
tion to the Old Testament, was the first to use the new title, abou: 
the close of the eighteenth century. He accepted the analytical 
theory of the Pentateuch, so far as it had been elaborated, but, lik<' 
Jean Astruc, who wrote a few years earlier, and who is usually cred- 
ited with first propounding that theory, he held to the Mosaic au- 
thorship. 

^ W. L, Baxter says of these : "Their more proper designation 
would be, Imaginationist Critics: they are higher than others, solel/ 
through building their critical castles in the air, instead of on terra 
flrma" {Sanctuary and Sacrifice: A Reply to Wellhausen, viii.). 



INTRODUCTION. V 

•worked our way back tlirougli tlie long cetnturiee wliicli separaUi 
■u,s from the age of Revelation, we must, as we have already 
seeoi, study each writing and mako it speak for itself on the 
common principles of sound exege&is" (0. T., 18). In othet: 
words, the method is to employ the laws of evidence by which 
other questions of fact are determined, to do this with "good 
sense," and, whem the meaning of tJie text is to be settled, to 
interpi^et it "on the common principles of sound exegesis."' 
When Prof. C. A. Briggs says, "The higher criticism is exact 
and thorough in its methods" {Bib. Study, 194), he speaks 
ti-uly of these methods when properly defined and applied ; but 
it is unfortunately true that the most exact and thorough 
methods may, in unskillful hands, or in the hands of men with 
sinister designs, be employed with disastrous results. Any 
method of procedure which pro'poses to apply the laAvs of evi- 
dence, may, by misapplication of those laws, lead to erroneoius 
and imjufiit decisions. Our courts of justice bear constant wit- 
ness to this fact^ Any procedure in which "good sense," as 
Professor Smith expresses it, is to be our guide, may, by the 
lack of good sense on our pa,rt., guide us astray. Common sense 
is a very uncommon commodity, and not less so among men of 
great learning than among their less fortunate fellows. And 
as to "the principles of sound exegesis," the scarcity of the 
scholars who can steadily command and employ these is start- 
lingly attested by the pages of countless, commentaries on the 
various books of the Bible. 

Prom these remarks it naturally follo^vs that higher crit- 
icism, howe\^er correct tihe principles by which it seeks to be 
guided, is, in practice, an extremely variable quantity — so va- 
riable as to include the writings of extreme rationalists on the 
one hand and the most conservative of Biblical scholars on the 
other. From these premises there springs again the inference 
that those who have adopted the conclusions of certain critics 
should not be so confident of their correctness as to practically 
assume their infallibility. We hear much of "assured results," 
but there are none so assured as to be exempt from revision. 
The real issue betv\''een the two great parties to the criticism of 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

the Pentateucli lies here. It is the question, which of the two 
Lave employed aright, and do employ aright, the laws of evi- 
dence, the maxims of common sense, and the principles of a 
sound exegesis. 

By what title these tw^ parties should be distinguished, is 
as yet an unsettled question. As we have stated above, the party 
who favor the analysis have usually styled themselves critics, 
and their opponents traditionalists; but this is manifestly un- 
just to the latter; for while there are traditionalists on both 
sides — that is, men who accept what has been ta,ught by their 
predecessors withooit investigation on thedr own part — ^yet it 
can not be denied that the leaders of this party have been as 
independent and as scholarly in their investigations as their 
opponents — Thomas Hartwell Home not less so than S. R. 
Driver. Again, the analytical party have styled thedr system 
modem and scientific, whereas the system, which opposes it is 
ec^ually modem in its argumentation, and whether it is less sci- 
entific or not is the question in dispute; Prof. James Robertson, 
in his Early Religion of Israel^ employed the titles "Biblical'* 
and "Antibiblical ;" but the more conservative school on the 
other side claim to be equally Biblical, in that they claim to have 
discovered the real significance of the Bible. Professor Briggs 
has employed, in his more recent writings, the titles "Critical" 
and "Anticritical ;" but this is to assume that his party alone 
is critical. If we had, on the analytical side, only the unbeliev- 
ing originators of the system, the difficulty would disappear, 
and the distinction of rationalistic, or unbelieving, and believing 
criticism would be appropriate and exact; but the difficulty is 
to find distinguishing terms which will include on that side 
both the radical and the evangelical wings of which it is com- 
posed. On tlie whole, it appears to the present author that the 
distinction is mest fairly preBeirve<l by the terms destructive 
and conservative. By common consent the unbelieving critics 
are styled destructive, seeing that they would destroy the whole 
superstructure of Biblical faith. But the so-called evangelical 
wing seek to destroy belief in the principal part of Old Testa- 
meait history as it has come down to us, and consequently their 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

criticism is also destructive to a large extent. These t^vo dis- 
tinguish ing terms are for these reasons employed in the body 
of this work. 

§3. The Analytical Theory of the Pentateuch. 

It is with the application of higher criticism to the Book 
of Deuteronomy that we are especially conoemed in this work. 
As a result of the labors of a century on the part of a succession 
of writers, mostly German rationalists, a theory of the origin 
and structure of the Pentateuch has been evolved which meets 
with the general approval of those, w^ho deny that Moses was 
its author.^ This theory is styled the analytical theory, be- 
cause of the peculiar analysis of the Pentateuch which it in- 
volves. The authorship and date of Deuteronomy is one of the 
subjects involved in this analysis, and this renders it important 
to present here a brief outline of the theory to which easy ref- 
erence may be had in reading the following pages. 

It is claimed by the advocates of this theory that the Book 
of Deuteronomy, or at least the legislative portioai of it (chap- 
ters xii.-xxvi.), was the first book of the Pentateuch to come 
into existence. It was first brought into public notice in the 
eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah, king of Judah, and it 
alone was the book found by the high priest Hilkiah, when he 
was cleansing the temple, as described in the twenty-second 
chapter of II. Kings. This Avas in the year 621 B. C, or about 
eight hundred years after the death of Moses. ^ The book had 
been written but a short time when it was thus found. Critics 
vary in judgment 'as to the exact time, but all agree that it had 
been composed within the previous seventy-five years. These 



VFor a brief historical sketch of this theory, the reader is re- 
ferred to Wellhausen's article, "Pentateuch," in Encyc. Brit.; to Bis- 
sell's Origin and Structure of the Pentateuch, 42-83; or to either of 
two hand-books. Radical Criticism, by Prof. Francis R. Beattie, of the 
Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.; and The Elements 
of Higher Criticism, by Prof. A. C. Zenos, of McCormick Theological 
Seminary, Chicago. 

*This opinion was first suggested by De Wette in the year 1817. 
(Wellhausen, Encyc. Brit.; Art. "Pentateuch.") 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

years were occupied by the idoiatrous roigns of Manasseh and 
Amon, and the first eighteen years of Joeiah. 

The moire radical critics hold that no writing at all came 
down from the time of Moses, unless it was tliei Decalogue in 
a much brief eir form than we now have it^ The more consetrva- 
tive class tbink that tbe document described in Ex. xxiv. 1-1 1 
as being written by Moses, consecrated by blood, and called 
^'The Book of the Covenant," was really written by Moses.. It 
contained tbe legislation found in Ex. xx.-xxiii. With these 
exceptions, all who have accepted tbe analytical theory agreo 
that Moses wrote no part, of tbe Pentateuch. Tbe conception 
of Moses as an autbor and lawgiver, which has prevailed among 
the Jews and Christians alike for so many centuries, is a delu- 
sion which has been dispelled by tbe critical investigatioos of 
tbe nineteentb century. 

Wbile all tbis is held as to Moses, it is not denied tbat 
some of tbe writing which is now found in the Pentateuch came 
into existence before the date of Deuteronomy. In the ninth 
century B, C, about tbe time of Elijah and Elisha, or possibly 
in tbe eighth, about the time of Amos and Hoseia (the exact 
time is unsettled), there came into existence two historical docu- 
ments which contributed to tbe final formation of tbe Penta- 
teuch. One of tbese was written in tbe northern kingdom, as 
appears from its more frequent references to persoins and places 
among the ten tribes. It was an attempt at a bistoury of early 
times, beginning with creation and ending with tbe death of 
Joshua. It contained such traditions of those times as bad come 
down orally to tbe time of its autbor, and possibly some written 
document of an earlier period. Its autbor habitually used the 
Hebrew name Elobim for God, on account of which he is known 
as tbe Elobistic writer, and is referred to briefl.y in critical 
writing as E. About the same time, some think earlier and 
some think later, a similar, but independent document ap- 



•Thus Kuenen says: "It need not be repeated here that Moses 
bequeathed no book of the law to the tribes of Israel. Certainly noth- 
ing more was committed to writing by him or in his time than the 
'ten words' in their original form" {The Religion of Israel, II. 7). 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

peared in the kingdom of Judah, covering the same period oJ: 
time, containing tlie stories afloat among the old people of the 
southern kingdom, and written by an author who uniformly 
called God Jehovah. He is called the Jehovistic writer, or 
briefly, J. The sto-ries in the two were to some extent the samS; 
with variations resulting from oral transmission, but each con- 
tained some stories not found in the other. It is not pretended 
that we have any historical account of either of these books, or 
that any ancient writer, either Biblical or secular, makes any 
allusion to their existence. It is only claimed that the fact of 
their existence is traceable in portions of our Pentateuch that 
were copied from them. 

At a still later period, but how late no one pretends to say, 
except that it was earlier than the writing of Deuteronomy, a 
third w^riter took these tw^o books of E and J in hand, and 
combined them into one, by copying first from one and then 
from the other, as he thought best, though sometimes, w^hen he 
was doubtful as to which of two stories was to be preferred, 
copying both. Occasionally he added something of his own. 
He is called a redactor, the German term for editor, and for the 
sake of brevity is usually referred to as R. The resulting docu- 
ment is called JE, and it is supposed that, as a natural result 
of the compilation, the two older documents passed out of use, 
and soon perished. The document JE was therefore the only 
historical book in existence among the Israelites previous to the 
date of Deuteronomy. 

The principal reason for holding that the Book of Deu- 
teronomy came into existence as above described, and that none 
of the other three books of law existed earlier, is the revolu- 
tion in worship effected by King Josiah under the influence of 
this book. It is alleged that previous to Hilkiah's discover;^- 
every man w^as at liberty to build an altar and offer sacrifices 
Avhere he saw fit, and that all the sacrificial altars that wero 
erected, as Jeremiah expresses it, "on every high hill and un- 
der every green tree," were entirely legitimate when the wor- 
ship was rendered to Jehovah. Many of these 2:)laces of w(jr- 
ship, however, had been consecrated by the Canaanites to the 



X INTRODUCTION. 

worship of Baal and other deities, and the Israelites were con- 
stantly enticed bj the associations of placei, and other considera- 
tions, to fall into idolatry. It theirefore occurred to the writer 
or writers of Deuteranomy to compose a book in the name of 
Moses which would pronounce worship at all such places unlaw- 
ful, and would concentrate all the sacrifices at the altar in front 
of the temple in Jerusalem. In this way idolatry wx)uld be sup- 
pressed, and the priesthood of the central sanctuary would be 
exalted and enriched. The fact that King Josiah, believing 
the book to be from Moses, enforced this regulation, proves by 
its success the wisdom of this devica 

Thus far, it is to be remembered, neither of the law-books, 
Exodus, Leviticus or ^umbe^rs, had been written; but between 
the time of Deuteronomy and the beginning of the Babylonian 
captivity, a priestly law was written containing the regulations 
now found in dhaptetns xvii.-xxii. of the Book of Leviticus. 
It is called the law of Holiness, and it is designated by the let- 
ter H. We now see that when Judah was led captive into Baby- 
lon, they had in hand the legal part of the Book of Deuter- 
onomy, six chapters of Leviticus, and the historical book JE, 
hut no other part of the Pentateuch. 

About the close of the Babylonian exile another book was 
written which contained both history and law. It covered his- 
torically the same period of time which had been covered by 
J and E, but it introduced much new matter. The first chapter 
of Genesis was now composed, the author J having begun his 
book with the second chapter. Many other parts of Genesis 
were also first Written by this author, together with the main 
body of the Books of Exodus, Leviticus and ^N'umbeirs. He 
was a priest, and he is referred to under the letter P. He wrote 
about one thousand years after the death of Moses. 

But the Pentateuch was not yet completed. The docu- 
ments JE, D, H and P, out of which it was yet to be compiled, 
existed separately. The task of compiling them into one fell 
to the lot of another redactor or editor, who, at or soon after 
the close of the exile, took in hand the preceding books, and 
compiled from them tbe Pentateuch as we now have it, adding, 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

however, here and there, some matter of his o^vn. This boot 
of the law of Moses was read to tlhe people by Ezra, as described 
in the eighth chapter of JSTeheoniali, and this reading was ite 
first publication to tlie world. 

As was said above, it is not claimed that there is any his- 
torical account of these various documents, or that any ancient 
writing contains the faintest allusion to their existence. But it 
is claimed tliat the fact of their separate existence and subse- 
quent combination can be demonstrated by separating tbem now 
according to their several peculiarities of style and subject- 
matter. This has been done, and the several documents have 
been published in separate form. So exact is the process, th.at 
in many instances a single short sentence, or a clause of a sen- 
tence, is assigned, one part to J, one tO' E, and another to P. 
The reader will find this analysis set forth to the eye in color:^ 
representing the several sources of the text, in Bi&sell's Genesi6 
m Colors, and in the various volumes of the Polychrome Bible. 
The several documents are also printed separately in Docu- 
ments of the Hexateucli, by W. E. Addis ; and in two works by 
Prof. Benjamin W. Bacon, of Yale, entitled Genesis of Genesis, 
and Exodus. This analysis will not be considered on its merits 
in the following pages, because it bears only remotely on our 
subject, and also because in a work entitled TJie Unity of Gene- 
sis, the last work that came from the prolific pen of the lamented 
Prof. William Henrs^ Green, of Princeton, the analytical, theoiry 
is thoroughly exposed as contrary to the facts in the case. To 
argue the question again would be a work of supererogation ; at 
least, until some formal reply shall be made to Professor Green. 

Th-ere are certain important results which attend the 
theory, and constitute an essential part of it, that are to be 
stated next. 

Should we grant all that has been thus far stated, and yet- 
maintain that all of these supposed writers were divinely in- 
spired so as to write with historical reliability, we could still 
maintain the autlientioity of Old Testament history. But such 
inspiration is denied. Miraculous aid of any kind is denied 
by radical critics, and inspiration that guards historical narra- 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

tives from, error is detaied by all. Consequently the theory 
throws a mist of uncertainty over the whole of tlie historical 
writings of tlie Old Teetamemt, and most positively discredits 
a very large portion of it. 

We may state first, as a specific result, that the first ten 
chapters of Genesis are altogether legendary or mytiiioal. The 
first two chapters are not, as they appear to be, a history of the 
creation of the universe and the formation of this earth as an 
abode for man; but. they are two contradictory accounts, one 
presenting the author P's conception, and the other J's, while 
both are very far away from describing tbe reality. Tbe story 
of the fall is a fable, and it falsely represents the change which 
took place in man. This change was an upward movement, as 
the tiieory of evolution demands. There was no fall of man. 
The stories of Cain and Abel are equally imaginary, and that 
of the flood, though self-consistent throughout as it stands, is 
resolved into two contradictory accounts of some local disaster 
in the valley of tbe Euphrates, one written by J and the other 
by P. The account of the confusion of tongues, and the conse- 
quent dispersion of the human race, is an idle attempt to ex- 
plain by a miracle that which came about in a natural way. 

As to the rest of Genesis., the stories of Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob and Joseph are also unreal with tbe radical critics, wbo 
in general deny tbat any of these men had a real existence. 
They are mythical heroes, such as were conjured up in the 
imaginations of tbe early heathen nations when trying to trace 
their primitive history. Thus the whole of the Book of Genesis 
passes away before the mind of the critic, except as its marvel- 
ous narratives may be used for illustrations. The more con- 
servative critics retain the belief that these patriarchs had a 
real existence, but they hesitate to acceipt the detiails of much 
that is written respecting them. They accept some and reject 
the rest according to each man's individual judgment. 

With the radicals, the Israelites weire never in bondage to 
the Eg}'ptians, as described in the Book of Exodus and repeated 
so constantly in the later books of the Old Testament. ; but they 
were a desert tribe, and in the course of their wandering's they 



INTRODUCTION. xill 

settled on tlie border of Egypt and incurred Egyptian lioetil- 
ity. The story of deliverance from tho Egyptians is tlieirefore 
wholly false, as is also that of the visit to Mount Sinai and the 
giving of the law. All the miracles in the wildeimess are de- 
nied, and it is claimed that the tabemaele in the wilderness 
never had an existence, the account of it being an imaginary 
story spun from the brain of P, with Solomoai's temple as 
its model. 

The conservatives admit that Israel was in bondage, but 
they hold that the stories of the ten plagues are exaggerated ac- 
counts of natural events. The passage of tJie Eed Sea they 
etrip of all its miraculous incidents, and th.e law given at Moomt 
Sinai contained nothing more than the little "book of the cove- 
nant" now found in Ex. xx.-xxiii. The laws in Leviticus were 
not given there as is declared both at tihe beginning and the 
end of that book, neither were those ^^^hioh a,re scattered through 
the Book of Xumbers given by Moses. As to the Book of 
Deuteronomy, w^e have already seen how its contents are re- 
garded by all these critics, both radical and conservative; for 
there is no material difference of opinion among them on 
this matter. 

We now see what is made of the Pentateuch, if this theory 
is true. The question is sometimes raised, What difference 
does it make whether Moses or some other man wrote the Pen- 
tateuch ? If this means whether Moses wrote it, or some other 
man who lived at a time to possess correct information, the dif- 
ference might be immaterial. But this is not the question. It 
is, whether Closes is its author, o^r several unkno^vn men who 
lived from seven hundred to one thousand years after Moses, 
and who had no means of correct knowledge. In other ^vords, 
the question is, whether it came from a man who was the chief 
actor in much the greater part of its events, and could therefore 
give an authentic account of them, or from a set of men re- 
moved many centuries from the events, whose source of infor- 
mation was nothing better than a hoary tradition, and who have 
actually given us nothing that is certainly real history. 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

Another consequence wKicli is a part of the theory is jet 
to be mentioned. It has been observed by those the least fa 
miliar with the new critical literature that it speaks no longer 
of the Pentateuch, but of the Hexateuch. This is because the 
Book of Joshua is involved with the Pentateuch in the same 
supposition as to dates and authorship. It will be remembered 
that J and E, the first writers, extended their narratives from 
Adam to the death of Joshua. P also did the same. The Greek 
translators of the Old Testament, who were the first to divide 
the Pentateuch into separate books, and to give them their 
Greek names, Geinesis, Exodus, Leviticus, !N'umbers and Deu- 
teronomy, made the mistake of supposing that these constituted 
one original book of early history and law, and that the Book 
of Joshua was a later production. Erom this mistake origi- 
rated the title "Pentateuch," signifying Rve books. But the 
critics have detected this mistake. They have found that the 
original work in the hands of Ezra, called the book of the law 
of Mosas, instead of closing with Deuteronomy, extended to the 
close of what we call the Book of Joshua., and that. Hexateuch 
(a work of six books), and not Pentateuch, is the correct title. 
The Book of Joshua is with them wholly unhistorical. It false- 
ly represents the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. It is 
not true that Joshua invaded the land with a great army, cross- 
ing the Jordan by a stupendous miracle, and subduing the tribeis 
of Canaan in two decisive campaigns. It is not true that he 
divided the land among the tribes, as described in the latter 
part of the book. All these accounts are inveoitions of later 
ages. The true account of the invasion is that very imperfect- 
ly given in the early chapters of the Book of Judges ; and this 
is interpreted to mean that one tribe at a time, or twot tribes 
acting together, invaded Canaan, and, after many vicissitudes, 
finally obtained lodgment among a people much more civilized 
£)nd enlightened than themselves. 

The theoiry, then, if true, robs the first six books of the 
Bible of authenticity, and puts their several authors on a lower 
level than that of ancient heathen historians by separating them 
many centuries further from the events which they pretend to 



INTRODUCTION. xV 

record. To the critics tliemselves this makes the Hexateuch 
a much more precious work than it was when they gave it 
credit ; for they are never tired, at least the "evangelical'^ wing, 
of repeating the aiSsertion of this increased preciousness^ How- 
ever difficult it is to acoonnt for this, I suppose that we must 
credit them with telling the truth ; but with the great mass of 
believers in Christ and the Bible the feeling must ever be the 
reverse of this. They feel now, and will forev^er feel, the utmost 
disgust for a set of books with the pretenses made in these, that 
are after all nothing more than these critics represent them 
to be. 

§4. The Suspicious Sources of This Theory. 

Before we consider the evidences for and against this 
theory, it is proper that we note some prima-facie considera- 
tions which cast upon it a cloud of suspicion. 

Those who have wrought it out we;re unbelievers, and were 
moved in their labors by hostility to the Bible and the Christian 
religion. Especially is this true of the two scholars to whom, 
above all others, the present form of the theory owes its com- 
pletion and defense, A. Kuenen, now deceased, and Julius Well- 
hausen, who is still living. ''^ They unhesitatingly reject as in- 
credible all accounts of supernatural events, including those 
connected with the career of Christ. These statements are free- 
ly admitted by the advocates of the theory, and some of them 
strive, as best they can, to ward off the suspicion thence aris- 

" In the introduction to his Religion of Israel, Kuenen says: "For 
us the Israelitish is one of these religions (the 'principal religions'), 
nothing less, but also nothing more" (p. 5). "As soon as it began to 
be clear that the testimony of Israel's sacred books could not stand 
the test of a searching inquiry; as soon as it appeared that they were 
least trustworthy just in those places where their accounts seemed to 
afford the most unequivocal proof of the truth of supernaturalism — 
from that moment, especially in connection with all the other motives 
which lead to the rejection of supernaturalism, its fall was an assured 
fact" (p. 11 f.). "The representation of Israel's early history presented 
to us in the books named after Moses and Joshua, must be rejected as 
ir. its entirety impossible. Prejudice alone can deny that the miracles 
related in the same writings must be rejected at the same time" 
(p. 22). 



xvi INTRODUCTION. 

ing. W. Robertson Smith acknowledges his own indebtedness 
to these two scholars in the following two sentences : ^^The first 
to attempt a connected history of the religion of Israel on the 
premises of the neweir criticism was Professor Kueinen, the 
value of whose writings is admitted by candid inquirers of every 
school." ^^Taken as a whole, the writings of Wellhausen are the 
most notable contribution to the historical study of the Old Tes • 
tament since the great work of Ewald, and almost every part of 
the present lectures owe© something to them" (Prophets, 12, 
13). Professor Briggs makes a similar acknowledgment, and 
seeks to guard against its effect: "We s'hould not- allow our- 
selves to be influenced by the circumstance that the majority of 
the scholars who have been engaged in these researches have been 
rationalistic or seimi-rationalistic in their religio'us opinions; 
and that they have employed the methods and style peculiar 
to the Geirman scholarship of our century. Whatever may have 
been the motives .and influences that, led to these investigations, 
the questions we have to determine are: (1) What are the 
facts in the case, and (2) do the theories accoimt for the facts V^ 
(Bib. Study, 212). But it is vain to attempt to allay suspicdon 
by such remarks as these. When the enemies of tihe Bible in- 
vent and propagate theories in the direct effort to destroy faith 
in the Bible, the friends of the) Book must necessarily be suspi- 
cious of them ; for such men would not be satisfied with their 
own works did they not believe that tbe Bible is discredited 
by them. 

Prof. W. H. Green ecxpresses himself on this point, with 
his usual calmness, in the following words : "It is noteworthy 
that the partition hypotheses in all their forms have been elab- 
orated from the beginning in the interest of unbelief. The un- 
friendly animus of an opponent does not indeed absolve us from 
patiently and candidly examining his arguments, and accepting 
whatever facts he may adduce, though Ave are not bound to re- 
ceive his perverted interpretations of them. !N'everthless, we 
can not intelligently nor safely overlook the palpable bias 
against the supernatural which has infected the critical theories 
which we have been reviewing, from first to last. AH the 



INTRODUCTION. xvil 

acknowledged leaders of the movement have, without exception, 
scouted the reality of miracles and prophecy and immediate di- 
vine revelation in their genuine and evangelical sensa Their 
theories are all inwrought with naturalistic presuppositions 
which can not be disentangled from them without their falling 
to pieces" (H. C. of P., 157). 

When the armies of one nation surrender to those of an- 
other it is usually understood that the latter has won its cause. 
So, if the army of the Lord shall surrender to the enemies of the 
Bible in respect to the nature of the Bible itself, it is inevitable 
that the onlooking world will take it that the cause' of unbeilief 
has triumphed. It should also be said in this connection, that 
the same rationalistic scholars who have evolved th.e analytical 
theory of the Pentateuch have espoused all of the old infidel ob- 
jections to the various books of the Old Testament, and have 
made these important parts of their argument in favor of the 
analysis. Their triumph, therefore, would be the triumph of 
infidelity in its oldest and most radical forms. If it is able to 
triumph thus, let it be so ; but let no man who hopes for salva- 
tion in Christ surreinder to the enemy unless he shall be com- 
pelled to do so after exhausting all the resources of evidence and 
logic within his reach. That the analytical theory of the Penta- 
teoich originated with and has been developed by the eneanies of 
the Bible, while it does not indeed necessarily prove it to be 
false, establishes a strong logical presumption that it is so, and 
demands of believers that they continue to combat it until their 
last weapon shall have been used in vain. 

§5. The Unbelieving Tendency of This Theory. 

If the actual tendency of accepting the theory in queotion 
is toward unbelief in the Christian religion, this fact is the 
strongest possible vindication of such a work as the present. 
That the theor}^ is at least dangerous in this respect, is acknow^l- 
edged by one of its most able advocates, Prof. Andrew Har- 
per, in the following words : "The debate concerning the crit- 
ical views of the Old Testament has reached a stage at which 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

it is no longer confined to professed teacliers and students of 
the Old Testament. It has filtered dowii, through niagazineis 
first, and tlien through newspapers, into the public mind, and 
opinions are becoming current concerning the results of criti- 
cism which are so partial and ill-informed that they can not but 
produce evil results of a formidable kind in the near future.'' 
Again, after stating his own conclusions with respect to Deu- 
teronomy, he says: "They have been reached after a careful 
consideration of the evidence on both sides, and are stated here 
not altogether without regret. . . . For, as Robertson Smith 
has well said, ^to the ordinary believer the Bible is precious as 
the practical rule of faith and love in wdiich God still speaks 
directly to his heart. Xo criticism can be otherwise than hurt- 
ful to faith if it shakes the confidence with which the simple 
Christian turns to his Bible, assured that he can receive every 
message which it brings to his soul as a message from God him- 
self.' l^ow, though it can be demonstrated that the view of 
Scripture which permits of such conclusions as those stated 
above is quite compatible with this believing confidence, ther^^ 
can be little doubt that Christian people will for a time find 
great difficulty in accepting this assurance. The transition 
from the old view of inspiration, so complete, comprehensible 
and effective as it is, to the newer and less definite doctrine, 
can not fail to be trying, and the introduction of it here can not 
but be a disturbing influence which it would have been greatly 
preferable to avoid" (Com., 2, 34). Such utterances as these^ 
so candid and yet so reluctantly made, imply the consciousness 
of a danger much greater than they express. The actual results 
have been even more serious than these thoughtful men appre- 
hended. J. J. Lias, one of the ablest writers on this subject in 
Great Britain, says in his Principles of Biblical Criticism: 
"A statement has been widely circulated in the public press 
that the number of persons in Germany who this year (1893j 
declared themselves to be of no religion is fourteen times as 
great as in 18Y1. Is there no connection betw^een this fact and 
the manner in which German criticism has treated the Bible ?" 
(216, note). 



INTRODUCTION. xix 

This necessary tendency of the theory in question will re- 
ceive further notice in the body of this work, when, we come to 
speak of its bearing on the assertions of Jesus and his apostles. 
It is but just to say, however, before leaving the subject at pres- 
ent, that many scholars, especially in Great Britain and Amer- 
ica, have accepted the analytical theory without aecepting the 
sweeping denial of all miracles which is common among its orig- 
inators. But this makes the evil tendency inherent in the 
theory itself all the more dangeTOois from tlie common habit 
among men of accepting injurious teaching from ap- 
parent friends, of the truth much more readily than from 
avowed enemies. On this point Professo^r Green very justly 
says: "It is only recently that there has been an attempt at 
compromise on the part of certain believing scholars, who are 
disposed to accept these critical theo'ries and endeavor to har- 
monize them with the Christian faith. But the inherent vice in 
these systems can not be eradicated. The inevitable result has 
been to lo^\^r the Christian faith to the level of these perverted 
theories instead of lifting the latter up to the level of a Chris- 
tian standard." 

§6. Helation" of Deuteronomy to This Theory. 

The alleged late date and unknown authorship of the Book 
of Deuteronomy are so involved in this theory of the Penta- 
teuch as a part of it, that the disproof thereof would shatter the 
whole superstructure. This is apparent w'hen we remember 
that the theory assumes the pre^eixistence of the documents J 
and E in order to account for historical allusions in Deuter- 
onomy. If, then, this last book is thrown back to tHie time of 
Moses, it neces-sarily carries back with it these preceding docu- 
ments, and thus the whole scheme is broken to pieces: for it 
is inconceivable that J and E were written before the time of 
Moses. Prof. Andrew Harper indirectly admits this when he 
says : "Deuteronomy has been the key of the position, the cen- 
ter of the conflict, in the battle which has been waged so hotly 
as to th© growth of religion in Israel. The attack on the views 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

hitherto so gemerallj held within the church in regard to that 
matter has rested more upon the character and the' date of Deu- 
teronomj than upon anything else" (Com.^ 2). It is for this 
reason, chiefly, that t(hei authorship of this book has beeia set- 
lected as the subject of this volume. While it is a matter of im- 
portance in itself to know the authorship of a book so invaluable, 
its importance is greatly enhanced by the consideration that in 
settling this question we virtually settle the same respecting the 
other books of the Pentatefuch. It would argue, peThaps, an 
extreme of self-confidence were the author to express the convic- 
tion that what he has said will settle this question, for doubtless 
the time and labor to be expended ere the critical superstructure 
of a century's growth can be undermined and demolished, a? 
the present author believes it certainly will be, are likely to be 
somewhat commensurate with those by which it was built up. 
The conflict hitherto has been chiefly that between the warring 
factions among the advanced critics themselves; hereafter it 
will be between the united advocates of the finally accepted 
theory and the friends of the/ Bible as it is. It is for the pur- 
pose of taking an humble part in this conflict that this volume 
is presented to the public. 

§7. Plai^ of This Work. 

The natural order in which to discuss the authorship of 
a book is to begin with the claim set up in the book itself, and 
consider first the internal evidences for and against it.. This 
would have been the order of the present discussion but for the 
fact that certain preposisessions have taken hold of the mind? 
of many, and until these are removed a favorable consideration 
of this evidence would be well-nigh impossibla It therefore 
seemed to the author wiser to begin with the arguments and evi- 
dences w'hich have been arrayed on the negative side of the' 
question, and to divide the discussion into two parts, of which 
Part I. is a consideration of the grounds on which the Mosaic 
Authorship is denied, and Part II. a presentation,, of those on 
:which it is afiirmed. . : ■ 



INTRODUCTION. xxl 

Even witli tins beginning we might have been euxpected to 
consider first the internal ovidemce against the Mosaic author- 
ohip, but there stands in the forefront of tJie negative position 
the assumption mentioned in a previous section (3, p. vii ) as 
to the actual origin of the book, and tliis take<:i precedence of 
all other considerations. Our discussion begins, therefore, 
with what tiie adverse critics have said Avith reference to the 
book discovered by the priest Hilkiah, as recorded in the twen- 
ty-second chapter of II. Kings. 

In representing the positions and arguments which I con- 
trovert^ I have not usually stated them in my own words, lest 
I might be suspected of misrepresenting them, and lest I should 
in some instances unwittingly do so^; but I have quoted freely 
from representative authors. In pursuing this course, I ha^'e 
t?ken pains to follow o-n every leading issue the line of argu- 
mentation pursued by that scholar on the other side who seemed 
to present the case with tlie greatest force; and where it ap- 
peared important I have appended foot-notes referring for con- 
firmation to other authors. If this method shall appear to any 
reader a more personal forai of controversy than courtesy 
might suggest., I beg him to consider that it gives more di- 
lectnesis and piquancy to discussion; and not to forget tlmt 
when an author places himself before the public as an antago- 
nist of established and cherished beliefs, he voluntarily exposes 
himself to direct attack. If, in this somewliat personal contro- 
versy, I have at any time oveirstepped the bounds of courtesy, 
I offer as my apology the indignation w^hich must ever stir the 
breast of a friend of the Bible when he sees it assailed by ar- 
guments so ahaillow and sophistical as to be unworthy of their 
authoi"s. And if at any time I hare indulged in lightness^ it 
should be remembered that ridicule, when justly administered, 
is a most pro2)er and effective weapon in the defense of truth. 

§8. Authorities and Abbreviations. 

a. List of woj'ks chiefly consulted m preparing this vd- 
urne : 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

The Proipherts of Israel: W. Robertson Smith. 

Old Testameoit in the Jewish Church: same authoa-; sec- 
ond edition. 

Introduction tO' the Literature of the Old Testament: S. 
R. Driver; sixth edition. 

International Critical Commentary: Deuteronomy: same 
a athor. 

Expositor's Bible: Deuteronomy: Andrew Harper. 

The Documents of the Hexateuch: W. E. Addis. 

International Critical Commeaitary: Judges: George F, 
Moore. 

The Canon of the Old Testament: Herbert E. Ryle. 

The Expositor's Bible : Isaiah : George Adam Smith. 

Biblical Study : Charles A. Briggs. 

Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch : same author. 

The Prophecies of Isaiah: T. K. Cheyne. 

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges: Ilosea: same 
author. 

Polychrome Bible : Isaiah : same author. 

Polychrome Bible : Joshua : W. H. Bennett. 

Polychrome Bible: Judges: George E. Moore. 

Articles "Israel" and "Pentateuch/' in Encyclo'pedia Brit- 
aimica : ninth edition : Julius Wellhausen. 

Prolegomena to Old Testament: same author. 

The Religion of Israel: Abraham Kuetnern. 

The Oracles of God: W. Sanday. 

Triple Tradition of the Exodus: Benj. W. Bacon. 

The Unity of Gesnesis: William Henry Green. 

Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch: same author. 

The Pentateuch: Its Origin and Structure: E. C. Bissell. 

Lex Mosaica: Essays* by Twelve Eminent Scholars of 
Great Britain. 

Sanctuary and Sacrifice: W. L. Baxter. 

Principles of Biblical Criticism : J. J. Lias. 

Early Religion of Israel: James Robeirtson. 

Prophecy and History in Reference to the Messiah : Alfred 
Edersheim. 



INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

Did Moses Write the Pentateuch after All?: F. E. Spen- 
cer. 

Inspiration of the Old Testament: Alfred Cave. 

The Veracity of the Haxatench: S. C. Bartlett. 

The Higher Critics Criticised: Rufus P. Stebbins and 
H. L. Hastings. 

The Ancient Hebrew Tradition: Fritz Honunel. 

h. Abbreviations used in citing boohs in the preceding list 
that are most frequently i-ef erred to: 

In connectiofn with the name of W. Robertson Smith, 
Prophets stands for 'The Prophets of Israel;" 0. T.— ''Old 
Testament in the Jewish Church.'' 

In connectio-n with the name of S. R. Driver, Int. — "In- 
troduction to Old Testament Literature;" Com. — "Commen- 
tary on Deuteronomy." 

In connection Avith Andrew Harpei*, Com. — "Commentary 
on Deuteronomy." 

In connection mth W. E. Addis, D. of H. — "Documents 
of the Hexateuch." 

In connection with Charles A. Briggs, Bib. Study — "Bib- 
lical Study;" H. C. of J/.— "Higher Criticism of the HeKa=- 
teuch." 

In connection with T. K. Cheyne, Isaiah — "The Prophe- 
cies of Isaiah;" Hosea — "Commentary on Hosea;" Pol. Isaiah 
— "Isaiah in the Polychrome Bible." 

Encyc. Brit. — "Encyclopedia Britannica ;" Encyc. Bib, — 
''Encyclo'pedia Biblica ;" Lex M. — "Lex Mosaica." 

In connection with W. H. Green, H. C. of P. — "Higher 
Criticism of the Pentateuch." 

In connection with W. L. Baxter, Sane, and Sac. — "Sanc- 
tuary and Sacrifice." 

In connection with Alfred Edersheim, P. and H. — 
"Prophecy and History in Reference to the Messiah." 

In connection with Alfred Cave, L 0. T. — "Inspiratioai 
of the Old Testament." 



PAKT I. 



EVIDENCES FOE THE LATE DATE. 



PATIT I. 

EVIDENCES FOR THE LATE DATE. 

§1. Evidence from the xVccount of Hilkiaii's Discovery. 

There is notJaing on which destinictive critics are more 

fully agreed, or more confideait in their convictions, than that 

the book found in the temple by the priest Hilkiah, as described 

in the twenty-second chapter of II. Kings, was the legal part 

cf the Book of Deuteronomy; and that this was the first time 

that a book of law existed in Israel. This conclusion is argued 

with great confidence from the account of the book given in the 

chapter named and the chapter following. I regard the second 

chapter of Kyle's Canon of the Old Testament as the strongest 

and clearest presentation of this line of argument known to 

me, and he shall be my guide in the discussion of it. Professor 

Eyle introduces the discussion with the following paragraph: 

It is not till the year 621 B. C, the eighteenth year of the reign 
ol King Josiah, that the history of Israel presents us with the first 
instance of a book which was regarded by all — king, priests, proph- 
ets and people alike — as invested not only with sanctity, but also 
with supreme authority in all matters of religion and conduct 
(p. 47.) 

To avoid misunderstanding on the part of readers not fa- 
miliar with the subject, I should remark that the author does 
not here mean to deny the previous existence of the conjectural 
documents J and E of the critics, which, according to the an- 
alytical theory, had been written from one to two hundred years 
earlier ; but these documents, according to hypothesis, were his- 
torical in their contents, and not books of law. (See Int., 
p ix.). 

Before entering upon his argument. Professor Ryle makes 
another statement as to the appreciation which was at once 
accorded the book, in the following: paragraph : 



2 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

In this familiar scene, "the book of the law" stands in the posi- 
tion of Canonical Scripture. It is recognized as containing the 
words of the Lord (xxii. 18, 19). Its authority is undisputed and 
indisputable. On the strength of its words the most sweeping meas- 
ures are carried out by the king and accepted by the people. The 
whole narrative, so graphically told by one who was possibly a con- 
temporary of the events he describes, breathes the conviction that 
the homage paid to "the book" was nothing more than its just due 
(p. 48). 

These words we must not forget, for they have a potent 
bearing on the arguments by which the author proceeds to sup- 
port his first proposition. 

To the minds of all scholars opposed to deistructive criti- 
cism, these words are perfectly acceptable; and all the results 
of finding the book are precisely what should be expected. For 
if, as they believe, and as the Scriptures assert., the whole Pen- 
tateuch had been in existence since the days of Moses, it would 
have disappeared from public view during the long reign of 
Manasseh, who abolished the religion which it inculcated, 
turned the temple of Jehovah into a heathen pantheon, prac- 
ticed every idolatrous rite known to the pagan tribes around 
him, and shed innocent blood from one end of Jerusaiem to 
the other. It would have been as much as the life of any Jew 
was worth during that period to have possessed a copy of the 
divine law and sought to propagate its teaching. And that pe- 
riod had lasted, though not in its greatest darkness, for seventy- 
£.Ye years, including the fifty-five of Manasseh's reign, the two 
of his son Amon, and the first eighteen of Josiah. Josiah him- 
self, being the son of Amon and grandson of Manasseh, had en 
joyed during their lifetime no opportunity to see the book of 
the law, or to learn anything of its oonteoits. It was only after 
bis father's death, w'hen h^ was eight years old, that men and 
women of faith who had lived through the period of apostasy, 
and who remembered some of the contents of the law of Moses, 
had an oppoo^unity to impart to his yo'ung mind what they 
themselves remembered of the word of God. That some such 
knowledge was imparted to him is evideait from the fact that 
in the eighth year of his reign "he began to seek after the God 
of his father David ;" and in the twelfth year of the same "he 



THE BOOK OF DEUTtJIiONOMY. 3 

began to purge Jerusailein and Judah from the high places, and 
the Asherinij and tlie graven images, and the molten images" 
(II. Ohron. xxxiv. 3). At this time he had imdoubteidly 
learned that Israel onoe had a law; that under tJae leadersihip 
of his grandfather they had departed from it; and that it was 
his duty to lead the people back to it. He knew from what 
worship his grandfather had departed, and knew that idolatry 
in all its forms was unlawful in Israel. He was well prepared 
then, should the book of the law be put into his hands, to re- 
ceive it as the ancient law of his God and his country, and to 
give it the reverence which it deserved. 

x\gain, when Hilkiah found the book of the law in tha 
temple, he found it just where it ought to have been; and the 
tinding caused no surprise, unless it was because it had not 
perished while the temple was so grossly defiled. For an 
express provision of the law required that the Book of Deute- 
ronomy should be kept in the temple ''by the side of the ark of 
the covenant" (Deait. xxxi. 24-26). And though we find no ex- 
press command like this in regard to the preservation of the 
ether portions of the Pentateuch, we may infer with full con- 
fidence that, if they existed, the priests and Levites realized 
that they must be kept in the same place of security. 

With all this agree perfectly the words of Hilkiah when 
he handed the book to Shaphan, the scribe or secretary of the 
king. He said, "I have found the book of the law in the house 
01 Jehovah" (TI. Kings xxii. 8). This is the style of one to 
whom the title of the book was familiar. He did not say, "a 
book containing the law of Jediovah ;" nor, ''a book Avhich ap- 
peareth to be the law of Jehovah;" but, ''the book of the law 
cf Jehovah." It is not the lang-iiage of one to whom the book 
v/as a new thing, but that of one to whom it was perfectly well 
Isuo^vn, but had been in some sense lost. 

The words, '"I have found the book," do not necessarily 
imply that it had been hidden, althoug'h it may have been. It 
may be that some faithful priest, at the beginning of Manas- 
seh's desecration of the temple, had hidden it to prevent its de- 
stniction, and that in thoroughJy cleansing the walls and floor 



4 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

of tJie teimpile its hiding-place was disclosed ; but tlie words may 
be as well accounted for if, after the long time in which it was 
expo'sed to destruction, he found it where it had been kept ever 
since the erection of the temple. The agents of Manasseh, not- 
withstanding their hatred of the book and its contents, may 
have permitted it to remain in its place, because in that place 
it was out of the reach of the people and in their own posses- 
sion. The history which it contained might have served as a 
motive for leaving it undisturbed so long as the worship which 
it enjoined was being effectually suppressed. 

Finally, when the book was read to the king, then by the 
prophetess Huldah, and then by the king himself to the people, 
the consternation and alarm which its threatenings excited are 
precisely such as would naturally occur if the book was known 
to be the old law-book of the nation given by God through 
Moses; but they are unnatural, and even incredible, on any 
other hypothesis. 

We may also remark, in addition, that every single act of 
the reformation which resulted from the discovery of this book 
would just as naturally and certainly have resulted had the 
book been the whole Pentateuch, as if it had been only the legal 
portion of the Book of Deuteronomy. What, then, can be the 
motive for denying tliat it was the whole Pentateuch, and by 
what course of reasoning is that denial supported ? Professor 
Eyle undertakes to fo^rmally answer this question, and I copy 
his argument in full : 

When we inquire what this "book of the law" comprised, the 
evidence at our disposal is quite sufficiently explicit to direct us to a 
reply. Even apart from the knowledge which we now possess of the 
structure of the Pentateuch, there never was much probability in the 
supposition that the book discovered by Hilkiah was identical with 
the whole Jewish "Torah," our Pentateuch. The narrative does not 
suggest so considerable a work. Its contents were quickly perused 
and readily grasped. Being read aloud, it at once left distinct im- 
pressions upon questions of national duty. Its dimensions could not 
have been very large nor its precepts very technical. The complex 
character of the Pentateuch fails to satisfy the requirements of the 
picture. Perhaps, too (although the argument is hardly one to be 
pressed), as it appears that only a single roll of the Law was found, 
it may not unfairly be remarked that the whole Torah was never 
likely to be contained in one roll; but that, if a single roll contained 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 5 

any portion of the Pentateuch, it was most probably the Deutero- 
nomic portion of it; for the Book of Deuteronomy, of all the com- 
ponent elements of the Pentateuch, presents the most unmistakable 
appearance of having once formed a compact independent work (p. 
48f.). 

The question here raised is vital in this discussion ; that is, 
it is vital as respects the analytical theory. With those who 
credit the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, it is immaterial 
v/hether tlie book was the whole Pentateuch or Deuteronomy 
alone ; but with the other party it is absolutely essential to show 
that it was not the whole Pentateuch, because it is an essential 
part of their theory that much the greater part of the Penta- 
teuch had not been written when this book was found. Por this 
reason nearly every writer in favor of the theory makes some 
attempt at argument on this point. 

The first point of argument in the preceding extract is 
that the book was read in too shoTt a time, and that it left im- 
pressions too distinct for the whole Pentateuch. In making 
this argument the professor draws on his imagination ; for there 
is nothing said in the text about the time consumed in the read- 
ing. Mr. Addis goes further still. He says: "It would have 
been a sheer impossibility to read the Pentateuch, or even the 
legal portions of the Pentateuch, through aloud, in one day; 
much less could it have been read twice in one day." He says 
further that "the kernel of Deuteronomy (i. e., Deut. iv. 45 
to xxvi., or possibly xii. to xxvi. ; xxvii. 9, 10 ; xxviii. ; 
xxxi. 9-13) exactly meets the required couditions. It could be 
read through aloud in between three and four hours at most'' 
(J), of H., Ixxv.). 

Doubtless Mr. Addis is right in asserting that the portions 
of Deuteronomy which he selects as the probable contents of the 
book could be read through in between three and four hours; 
but, in order to reduce the time to this limit, he has to assume 
that the book contained only the chapters and verses which he 
cites. If it was the whole Book of Deuteronomy, it would have 
required six hours to read it through, and to have read it twice 
in one day would have filled the day from sun to sun. But 
Shaphan read it once to himself ; he read it to the king once ; 



6 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

and tJaen Huldah eitJier read it or protaounced judgineat con- 
cerning its conteaits without reading it, which is highly improb- 
able (II. Kings xxii. 8, 10, 14-16). These three readings 
are rather too mnch for one day, eveai if the contents were as 
meager as Mr. Addis supposes; and it follows either that more 
than one day was occupied, or that only a part of the contents 
of the book was read ; that is, the part which alarmed the king 
and caused him to i-end his clothes. Chaptei's xxviii. to xxx. 
would have been sufficient for this; and this part of Deute- 
ronomy, or any other part of it, may have been read to the king 
if the book from which it was read was the whole Pentateoich. 
Indeed, this is the very part of the whole Pentateuch which it 
was most important fo'r him to hear, seeing that it, a,bove all 
other parts, presented the fearful penalties which God had 
prescribed for such an apostasy as that under Manasseh and 
Amon. The only thing that militates against this view of the 
reading is, that when the king read to the people, it is said that 
^'he read in their ears all the words of the book of the cove- 
nant which was found in the house of Jehovah" (xxiii. 2). But 
while these words most naturally include all the contents of 
the book, they may refer to only those words connected imme- 
diately with ^^the covenant ;" and the covenant is especially em- 
phasized in the denunciatory passage just mentioned. (See 
xxix. 1-13). Huldah uses the same universal expression, when 
she says (16) : ^^Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will bring evil 
upon this place, and upon the inhabitants theireof, even all the 
words of the book which the king of Judah hath read." Here, 
although she says "all the words of the book," she clearly limits 
her meaning to those in which evil to the city and its people 
is predicted. This justifies us in limiting the same expression, 
v^hen applied to the public reading, to the same part of the 
book. Unless, then, we consitrue this passage to mean tha,t all 
the contents of the book were read, as ^v^U as the part pertain- 
ing to the covenant and its violation, the reading could have 
been done from a book containing the whole of the Pentateucli 
as well as from one containing Deuteronomy alone. It follows 
tliat whether the book was Deuteronomy alone, or part of our 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. T 

present Deiiterononiv, is involved in greiat uncertainty, to say 
the least^ and that to this exteoit the same uncertainty hangs 
over that part of the analytical theory which assigns a later 
date than that of Deuteronomy to the greater portion of our 
l)i*e9ent Pentateuch. An adverse decision on this point would 
bo an obstacle not to be overcome by any arg-umentation in 
favor of the analytical theory. This uncertainty is enhanced 
when we consider the bearing of another passage in the his- 
tory of Josiah. It is said (xxiii. 25) : '^iVnd like unto him 
was there no king before him, that turned to Jehovah with all 
his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, ac- 
cording to all the law of Moses." What is meant here by "all 
the law of Moses" ? The expression certainly includes the 
book of the law found by Hilkiah; but if the analytical 
theory is true, it includes more; for, according to that theory, 
the documents J and E were already in existence, and they 
were w^ell known to the author of "Kings. But J contained 
not only his history from the creation to the death of Joshua, 
but also the laws now found in Ex. xx. to xxiii., originally 
called "The Book of the Covenant." Josiah walked, then, 
according to all that was w^ritten in this book, and in the whole 
of the books J and E. But wdiere did he find the latter after 
the apostasy of his father and his grandfather, unless they 
were included in the book of the laAv found by Hilkiah ? We 
have no hint of any other book of the laAV kno'A\^i to him. Cer- 
tainly, then, the critics ought to admit that J and E were in 
Hilkiah's book ; and if these were there, their line of argu- 
ment against the presence in it of the whole Pentateuch breaks 
doAvn, so far as it is derived from the account given of Hil- 
kiah's discovery. 

Before leaving this branch of the argument, I may add 
that Andrew Harper, who is the peer of any other writer on 
the analytical side, unlike Addis and many others, admits that 
the book in question was substantially Deuteronomy as we 
now have it. He says : 

That this was Deuteronomy, if not altogether, yet practically, 
ac we have it now. there ran be but little doubt: and it immediately 



8 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

became the text-book of religion for all that remained of Israel (Ex- 
positor's Bible, Deuteronomy, p. 45). 

He forgets, as his colle/agueis do, the "book of the covenant" 
embodied in J and JE. 

The second point of argument in the extract which I have 
made from Ryle's Canon is based on the assumption that the 
whole Pentateuch was never likely to be contained in one roll. 
Unlike the majoirity of his class of critics, however, he ad- 
mits that this argument is "hardly one to be pressed." It cer- 
tainly is not, foir two reasons; first, that the document is no- 
vvhere called a roll, but always a book; and, second, that as 
the Pentateuch was always spoken of in ancient times by the 
flews as one book, it follows that when written on a roll in- 
btead of leaves, it is most probable tbat one roll received it 
all. The roll would be a large one, but large rolls were no 
more objectionable m the time of manuscripts than large vol- 
umes were after the time of printing. But it is idle to argue 
about t!he size of a roll containing the whole Pentateuch, when 
the document in question was not a roll^ but a hooh. 

It is surprising with what caution Professor Pyle ex- 

pi^sses himself on the question w'heither the book found by 

Hilkiali was our Deuteronomy, or a part of it, and, if a part, 

what part- He says: 

We seem to have convincing proof that the "book of the law" 
was either a portion of our Deuteronomy, or a collection of laws Deu- 
teronomic in tone, and, in range of contents, having a close resem- 
blance to our Book of Deuteronomy (p. 49). 

When we consider that it is a necessary part of the an- 
alytical theory of the Pentateuch to establish the identity of 
that book with Deuteironomy, or, at least, with the legal por- 
tion of it, this mode of speech is vague enough ; and it shows 
that the writer^s own convictions on the subject were in a 
nebulous condition. In his attempts at proof we find, as we 
should naturally expect, the same vagueness which character- 
izes his proposition. He claims that the evidence is twofold, 
and the first form of it he states in these words: 

1. The description which is given of the book found in the tem- 
ple shows that, in the most characteristic feature, it approximated 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 9 

more closely to portions of Deuteronomy than to any other section 
of the Pentateuch (ib.). 

This vagueness should not be held as a reproach to Pro- 
fessor Ryle, but rather as an evidence of his conscieaitiousness, 
and of his logical discrimination. He is too logical to deduce 
positive conclusions from doubtful preanises, and too conscien- 
tious to affirm what he feels that he can not prove. But he 
proceeds to present what proofs ho has, and we patiently con- 
sider them: 

(a) The book contains denunciations against the neglect of the 
covenant with Jehovah (II. Kings xxii. 11, 13, 16, 17). Now, the 
Pentateuch contains two extensive passages describing the fearful 
visitations that should befall the people of Israel for following after 
other gods (Lev. xxvi.; Deut. xxviii.-xxxi.). Of these, the passage 
in Deuteronomy is the longest, and while the passage in Leviticus 
would be calculated to make a very similar impression, it may be no- 
ticed that the words of Huldah, referring to the curse contained in 
"the book of the law," possibly contain a reference to Deut. xxviii. 
3Y and xxix. 24 (cf. II. Kings xxii. 19). It can not be doubted that 
one or the other, or both, of these denunciations must have been in- 
cluded in Josiah's "book of the law" (p. 50). 

As proof that the denunciations which alarmed Josiah 
"v^ere those in Deuteronomy rather than those in Leviticus, 
this is feebleness itself. It turns upon the "possibility," not 
the certainty, nor even the probability, that the words of Hul- 
dah contain a reference to two particular verses in Deuteron- 
omy. What are these particular words of Huldaii? The 
verse cited reads: "Because thine heart was tender, and tliou 
didst humble thyself before Jehovah, when thou heardst what 
I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants there- 
of, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and 
hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I have also heai'd 
thee, saith Jehovah.'^ These are the words of Huldah, and 
the verses in Deuteronomy to which she "possibly'^ had refer- 
ence are these: "And thou shalt become an astonishment, a 
proverb, and a byword, among all the peoples whither Jehovah 
shall lead thee away" (Deut. xxviii. 37) ; "Even all the na- 
tions shall say. Wherefore hath Jehovah done this unto this 
land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?" (xxix. 
24). Well might the professor siay that tlie words of Huldah 



10 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

possibly cointain a reference to the latten- tAvo veirses. When 
all tliree of the verses are merely cited by their chapter and 
verse numbers, the reader may possibly think that possibly 
there is such a reference; but when they are all quoted in 
full, seriatim, he can judge of this possibility, and he can 
see v^hy our cautious author uses the adverb "posisibly" — an 
expression ncA, characteristic of conclusive reasoning. 

But, apart from all this reasoning from possible prem- 
ises, we may freely admit, and our position requires us to 
admit, what Professor Hyle states as his conclusion, that "one 
or the other, or both these denunciations must have been 
included in Josiah's ^book of the law ;' '^ for if it was the denun- 
ciations in Lev. xxvi. that alarmed him, this would show 
that the Book of Leviticus w*as in the volumei; if it was those 
ill Deuteronomy, this would only prove that Deuteronomy w^as 
in the book; and if Shaphan read both sets of denunciations, 
it only proves that Leviticus and Deuteronomy weire both, in 
the book. In other words, whatever proof is found that the 
Book of Deuteronomy is quoted or referred to in this account 
is proof that the Book of Deuteronomy was in tihe manuscript, 
as it must have been if the manuscript was the whole Penta- 
teuch; but it is not proof, it can not be, that the other books 
of tbe Pentateuch were absent from it. It is on this last point, 
as we shall see again and again, that the whole line of argu- 
ment which we a^re considering is fatally defective. 

The second argument imder this head is stated by Pro- 
fessor Kyle in the following" words : 

(6) The reforms carried out by the king and his advisers, in 
order to obey the commands of the "book of the law," deal with 
matters all of which are mentioned, with more or less emphasis, in 
the Deuteronomic legislation (p, 50). 

Suppose this to be true, and what does it prove? If it 
were found, upon further examination, that these reforms 
deal with matters not mentioned in any book of the Pentateuch 
except Deuteronomy, it A\^uld certainly prove that Deuteron- 
omy was in the book that was found ; but it would not prove 
that the rest of the Pentateuch was not in it. The doctrinal 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, 11 

part of Luther's RefoTmation turned upon the teaching found 

in Paul's two epistles, Galatians and Romans; but this is by 

no means proof that Luther's 'New Testament contained none 

of the other books that are in o-urs. 

But let us examine the specifications adduced in support 

of this proposition: 

(t) The principal religious reform carried out by Josiah was 
the suppression of the worship at the high places, and concentration 
of the worship at the temple. No point is insisted on so frequently 
and so emphatically in the Deuteronomic laws as that all public 
worship is to be centralized at the one place which Jehovah himself 
should choose (Deut. xii. 5 and passim). 

Grant all this and what is proved by it beyond the fact 
that Deuteronomy was part of the book? What proof does 
it afford that Deuteronomy, or some part of Deuteironomy, or 
"a collection of laws Deuteronomic in tone," was all of the 
book ? Should a man find a copy of Shakespeare, and, in writ- 
ing about it, make allusions only to Hamlet, could we argue 
that his copy contained Hamlet alone, or some part of Hamlet, 
or a drama "having a close resemblance" to Hamlet? 

(ii) Josiah took measures to abolish the worship of the heav- 
enly bodies, a form of idolatry distinct from the worship of Baal and 
Ashtoreth. His action is in obedience to the commands of Deutero- 
nomic laws (Deut. iv. 19; xxvii. 3). There alone in the Pentateuch 
this particular form of idolatry is combated. For, although it had 
existed in an earlier time, it does not seem to have infected the re- 
ligion of Israel until late in the monarchical period (cf. II. Kings 
xxi. 3, 5; xxiii. 4, 5, 12). 

These considerations are not sufficient to prove that Deu- 
teronomy was even a part of the book found; for the general 
prohibition of idolatry in the Decalogue was sufficient to jus- 
tify Josiah in abolishing the worship of the heavenly bodies, 
if he had never seen Deuteronomy. And although it is true 
that there is no specific mention of this kind of worship as 
being actually existent in Israed till late in the monarchy, the 
fact here admitted by Professor Ryle that "it had existed in 
an earlier time," shows that it could have been specifically 
condemned in Deuteronomy if the latter was written by Moses. 
This argument thei'efore has no bearing whatever on the date 
of Deuteronomy. 



12 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

{in) Josiah celebrated the feast of the Passover (II. Kings xxiii. 
21-23) in accordance with the "book of the law" — we find the law 
of the Passover laid down in Deut. xvi. 1-8. 

True, he kept ihib Pa&sover ^^as it is written in this book 
of tlie covenant;" and it is true that the law of the Passover 
is laid down in the passage cited from Deiut^ironoimj in an 
incomplete form.; but it is also laid down in Exodus, Leviti- 
cus and ISTumbeirs; and so it appears again, that if Deuteron- 
omy had not been even a part of the book found, Josiiah 
would have done precisely what he did. If I weo^e trying 
to prove that the book found contained the rest of the Pen- 
tateuch and not Deuteronomy, see how the arguments of the 
critics would suit my purpose. Strange that men with so 
much logical acumen never turn their own arguments around, 
and look at them on the other side. 

It is true that Josiah kept the Passover; and it is also 
said in the text that "there was not kept such a passover 
from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all 
the days of the kings of Israel, ^ nor of the kings of Judah" 
(xxiii. 22). In what did its pre-eminence consist if not, in 
part at least, in the strictness of its compliance with the law* 
But if Josialh had been guided by Deuteronomy alone, he 
would have been ignorant of some of the most essential re- 
quirements of the law respecting this feast. The passage 
just cited (xvi. 1-8) is the only one in Deuteronomy giving 
any part of this law. It sliows that the feast was to be ob- 
served in the month Abib, but it. does not say on which day 
of the month, and a wrong day wo-uld have vitiated the serv- 
ice. It says that the victim should be of the flock or the 
herd; but it does not say that it must be a lamb of the first 
year without blemish. It does not say that the animal was 
to be roasted whole, that bitter herbs were to be eiaten with 
it as well as unleavened bread, nor does it preseribe that no 
bone of the victim should be broken. It says nothing at all 
about the burnt-offerings which were to be offered every day 
of the Passover week. ^Not half of the legal provisions for 
this feast are mentioned in Deuteronomy, and yet. with this 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 13 

book alone we are to believe tliat Josiah kept sudi a Passr 
over as had not been kept befoi*e since tlie da.ys of tlie judges. 
Are we told, in reply, that those other provisions are later 
additions to the law, and that those mentioned in Deuteiron- 
omy are all that were at first observed? If so, he who thus 
replies is guilty of the oft-repeated fallacy in criticism of 
changing history to save an argument, and at the same time 
of assuming as the basis of argument that which is yet in dis- 
pute; for the proposition that Exodus, Leviticus and lN"um- 
bers are of later date than Deuteronomy is one of the mat- 
ters under discussion. 

(iv) Josiah expelled wizards and diviners from the land in ex- 
press fulfillment of "the book of the covenant" (IL Kings xxiii. 24); 
we find the prohibition of this common class of impostors in Ori- 
ental countries expressed in strong language in Deut. xviii. 9-14. 

Here, again, the author makes an argument that is whol- 
ly inconsequential, for two reasons: First^ if the book found 
was the whole Pentateuch, this passage of Deuteironomy 
would have been in it; and, second, if the Book of Deuteron- 
omy had not been in the book at all, the prohibition of wiz- 
aids and diviners ^vould have been found in the pa-rt now 
called Leviticus, which prescribes that all such impostors 
must be stoned to death (Lev. xx. 27). What kind of proof 
is this that the book was Deuteronomy alone? 

Professor Ryle was too thoughtful a ^vriter not to see 
and feel the weakness of this mode of reasoning; consequently 
I he following paragrapih is added to bolster it up: 

It is not, of course, for a moment denied that laws dealing with 
these two last subjects are to be found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. 
But as in all four cases Josiah's action was based upon "the law," 
whatever "the law" was, it must have dealt with "feasts" and with 
'wizards" as well as with "concentration of worship" and "star-wor- 
ship." In the Deuteronomic laws all four points are touched upon. 

The weakness is not made strong; for, if the book found 
was the whole Pentateuch, it contained. Deuteronomy with its 
notice of these subjects, together with the other parts in which 
all these subjects, except "concentration of woirship," are 
dealt with. The attempt to show that the Book was Deu- 
teronomy alone is still a failure as glaring as befora More- 



14 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

over, so fully are all tJiese topics, with tlie exception named, 
dealt with in otheT parts of the Peaitatefiich, that but for the 
latter w^ should have no evidence from this point of view 
that Deuteronomy was in the book at all. 

The next argument of our author is more elaborate, and 
it turns upon one of the titles given to Josiah's book : 

(c) The book found in the temple is designated "the book of the 
covenant" (II. Kings xxiii. 2, 21), and it appears that it contained 
a covenant to the observance of which the king solemnly pledged 
himself (i&. 3). In the Pentateuch we find, it is true, a mention of 
"the book of the covenant" (Ex. xxiv. 7), by which the substance 
of the Sinaitic legislation (Ex. xx.-xxiii.) seems to be denoted. But 
it is clear, from the fact that the section (Ex. xx.-xxiii.) contains 
no denunciation; from th€ fact that it contains only the very brief- 
est notice of the feast of the Passover, and then under another name, 
"the feast of the unleavened bread" (Ex. xxiii. 15); from the fact 
that it makes no mention of either wizards or star- worship — that 
this portion of the Israelite law can not be "the covenant" referred 
to in II. Kings xxiii. On the other hand, an important section at 
the close of our Book of Deuteronomy is occupied with a "covenant;" 
and it can hardly be doubted that "a book of the law" which was 
also "the book of the covenant," must have included such passages 
as Deut. xxix. 1, "These are the words of the covenant which the 
Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel;" verse 
9, "Keep therefore the words of this covenant;" verse 14, "Neither 
with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;" verse 21, 
"According to all the curses of the covenant that is written in the 
book of the law;" verses 24, 25, "Even all the nations shall say, 
Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? . . . Then men 
shall say. Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord" (pp. 
51, 52). 

Unfortunately for this line of argument, some of the 
most eminent of Professor Ryle's fellow critics deny that 
chapter xxix., from which his last four quotations are made, 
was a part of the original document. (See Driver, Commen- 
tary on Deuteronomy, Ixxiii.-lxxvii. ; Addis, Documents of the 
Hexateuch, Ixxv.) If they are correct, these citations amount 
to nothing, seeing that in that case these verses w^ere never 
seen by Josiah, and they had therefore no influence on his 
conduct. But they are doubtless wrong. The whole Bo<:k 
of Deuteronomy, with the exception of the last chapter and a 
few interpolated passages not affecting the present discussion, 
was contained in the book found in the temple; and, if it was 
there as a part of the whole Pentateuch, it may have been 



THE BOOK OF DEUTEROXOMY. it 

spoken of as "the book of tlio covenant'' But if Deiuterononiy 
may have had this title bocans© of the frequent reference in 
it to the covenant bet.ween God and Israel, how much nio're 
might the Pentateuch as a whole have been called tlie Book 
of the Covenant, seeing that it contained all of Deuteronoiny 
and in addition to this ^^the book of the covenant," expressly 
so called, which is foimd in Ex. xx.-xxiii., and is con- 
stantly alluded to in all the Pentateuch, ^^^lile, then, onr 
author's argumentation, taking his own view of the contents 
of Josiah's book, would prove that Deiuteronomy was part of 
the book, it stops there, and moves not a hair's-bi-eadth toward 
showing, as the necessities of the theory require him to sho^v, 
that it was Deuteronomy alone. 

The next argimient presented by Professor Ryle I will 
summarize, in order to save spaca It is based on the fact 
that the author of Kings, in the only two passages in which 
he quotes expressly the law of Moses, quotes from Deuteron- 
omy. The passages are 11. Kings xiv. 6, where tlie quotation 
is undoubtedly from Dent. xxiv. 16; and I. Kings ii. 3, where 
David is addressing Solomon and says: "Keep the charg-e of 
the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, 
and his commandments, and his testimonies, accoirding to that 
which is written in the law of Moses, tliat thou mayest pros- 
j>er in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou tumest 
thyself." It is claimed that this is a citation from Deut. xvii. 
:l 8-20 ; but if the reader will compare the U\X) he will find 
that they contain very few woTds in common. Moreover, un- 
less the author of Kings has falsified history in this passage, 
it is David, and not himself, who makes the reference.; and 
if it is in reality a reference to Deiuteronomy, it proves that 
Deuteronomy existed in the days of David. But in reality 
these words of David are an almost verbatim quotation from 
Josh. i. 8, where God admonished Joshua o-n his taking com- 
mand of the army of Israel. David, in admonishing his son 
Solomon ^vhen about to be made king of Israel, quoted the 
words of the Almighty addressed to Joshua on a similar oc- 
casion. This does prove that the Book of Joshua was in ex- 



16 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

istence before David's deatii., which is itself a deathblow to 
the analytical theory, but it has no bearing whatever on the 
identification of the book found by Hilkiah. 

Professor Kyle also claims that ^'^in numerous character- 
istic expressions and phrases the compiler of the Book of 
Kings shows a olose acquaintance with the Deuteronomic por- 
tion of the Pentateuch/' and he cit^s sefveral passages in proof. 
Then he argues: 

If, therefore, the compiler of the Books of Kings identified the 
"law of Moses" and the "book of the law" with Deuteronomy, or, at 
least, with a Deuteronomic version of the law, we may nearly take 
it for granted, that, in his narrative of the reign of Josiah, when 
he mentioned "the book of the law" without further description, he 
roust have had in his mind the same Deuteronomic writings with 
which he was so familiar (p. 53). 

Yes, ^4f/' But, if the compiler of the Books of Kings 
had in his possession the whole of the Pentateaich, as we have 
repeatedly shown above, he would have written precisely as 
he does, and therefore nothing that he says can be logically 
held as proof that he had Deiuteronomy alone. 

At this point let it be carefully observed that, according 
to the analytical theory itself, tho documents J and E were 
already in existence, the former containing legislation now 
found in Ex. xx.-xxiii. If we suppose, with the analytical 
critics, that Deuteronomy alone was found by Hilkiah, and 
that it alone was known by the author of the Books of Kings 
as ^^the book of the law," what had become of these other two 
documents? Had they also been lost or hidden during Ma- 
nassehj's apostasy ? They must have been, or Deuteronomy 
could not have held the field alone as the law of God. But 
if they had thus disiappe'a.red, what was to hinder all the Pen- 
tateuch from having disappeared in like manner? Even, 
then, if the critics could make out their case, that Deuteron- 
omy alone was Josiah's book, this would by no means pre- 
clude the supposition that the other books of the Pentateuch 
were in existence, but hidden in so^me other place. Thus we 
see that, fro^m every point of view, the analytical theory is in- 
volved in confusion and inconsistencies. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 17 

After denying that the Book of Deuteronomy was of Mo- 
saic origin, and claiming that it first became known to tho 
public in the eig'hteenth year of Josiah, the next task for tho 
critics is to show us when the book was written. On this 
point tlie radicals only are able to speak definitely. They tell 
us that the composition of the book was a pious fraud, per- 
petrated by Hilkiah and others for the purpose of breaking 
down the worship in the high places, and enriching the tem- 
ple priests by concentrating all in their hands. (See Sec. 4 
[2].) Professor Kyle, and our English and American crit- 
ics, are not willing to thus asperse the character of Hilkiah, 
but in trying to avoid it they shroud the origin of the book 
in a cloud of uncertainty. I quote from Kyle, his answer to 
the radicals: 

To these questions the scholars who suppose the composition of 
the book to have been the work of Hilkiah himself and his friends, 
and who ascribe its discovery, not to chance, but to collusion, have 
no difficulty in making reply. Viewed from such a point of view, 
the book played a part in a clever intrigue conducted by the 
priests at Jerusalem who aimed at dealing a finishing stroke to the 
rival worship at the high places. But we have no reason to impugn 
either the accuracy or the sincerity of the historian, who describes 
an incident of which he was possibly a witness. An unprejudiced 
perusal of his narrative leaves the impression that he has no shadow 
of a suspicion of the discovery having been anything else but a 
fortunate accident, and that, in the opinion of those living at the 
time, the book was supposed to have existed long ago and to have 
been lost (Canon of Old Testament, p. 54). 

This is a very unsatisfactory answer to the radicals. It 
is only to say that the historian, that is, the author of the 
Book of Kings, and "those living at the time," were so success- 
fully deceived that they had "no shadow of a suspicion" abouc 
the discovery, and that they really supposed the book to have 
existed long ago. If they thus supposed, and if, as Professor 
Kyle believes and tries to prove, the supposition was false, it 
lollows that w4iatever the motive of Hilkiah and othei-s, tlie 
people were deceived by somebody, and most successfully de- 
ceived. In the argument thus far the radicals clearly have 
the advantage. 

But Professor Ryle gives some reasons for not believing 
that the book was an ancient one when discovered: 



18 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Assuming, then, that this "Deuteronomic 'book of the law' " was 
honestly regarded as an ancient book in the eighteenth year of Jo- 
siah, we must take into consideration the following facts: (1) That 
never before, on the occasion of a religion reform, do we find, in the 
Books of Samuel and Kings, any appeal to the authority of a book; 
(2) that, even in Hezekiah's reign, the attempt to suppress the high 
places was not, so far as history tells us, supported by any such 
appeal; (3) that the earlier prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isa- 
iah (I), give no certain sign of having been influenced by the Deu- 
teronomic laws (p. 55). 

The first two of these reasons are evasive; for in the very 
brief account of Hezekiah's refoirmation, in which he put 
down the hig'h places as Josiah did, it is said of Hezekiah, 
"He clave to Jehovah, he departed no't from fotllowing him, 
but kept his commandments which Jehovah commanded 
Moses'' (II. Kings xviii. 6). Here the king is said to have 
clung to Jehovah in effecting this refonn ; he kept Jehovah's^ 
commandments which he commanded Moses; but because the 
word '%ook" is not employed, Professor Ryle would have us 
conclude that the coimmandments which were kept, and which 
God had commanded Moses, were not in a book. It is a. 
common argument with believers that if you find in the sec- 
end century, or in any year of the first century, quotations 
of passages now found in Paul's Epistle to the Eomans, they 
prove that the epistle existed that early. Eut no, say the un- 
believers, not unless the name of the epistle is given. Thus 
the infidel argument against the ^ew Testametnt is taken up 
by "evangelical critics," when they come to the Old Testa- 
ment. The man of common sense, whether a believer or an 
imbeliever, will, so long as he reads of men "keeping the com- 
mandments of God Avhich he gave Moses," conclude that they 
had the book in which these commandments were written. As 
to the earlier prophets, they give abundance of evidence that 
ihey knew the ethical teachings which abound in the Book of 
Deuteronomy; how dares Professor Ryle to assume that they 
were not led to do so by knowing the contents of the book ? 
l^othing short of positive knoAvledge that the book had not 
been written in their day, would justify such an assumption ; 
and yet the assumption is used as an argument to prove the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 19 

fiict on wliicli it de|>ends. This is too glaring a fault in logic 
to be excusable in such an author. 

A consciousness of ^\^akness is beitrayed at this point by 
the professor's next sentence, in which he says: 

Of course, as has already been pointed out, ancient laws are 
copiously incorporated in Deuteronomy, and the mere mention of in- 
stitutions and customs which are spoken of in Deuteronomy, does not 
prove the existence of the book itself. 

This is true; but it is not in point; for he is trying to 
prove that because the word "book" is not used in connection 
with theon, the book did not exist. This is an argument from 
silence; and lest his readers should disregard it on that ac- 
count, our autlior next attempts to bolster up this species of 
argument : 

The force of the argument from silence, however, will at once 
be appreciated when the pronounced influence of the Deuteronomic 
writings upon the style of authors to whom the Book of Deuteron- 
omy was well known — e. g., Books of Kings, Jeremiah and Zepha- 
niah — is fully taken account of. There is nothing parallel to it in 
the earlier Hebrew literature. The inference is obvious; the Book 
of Deuteronomy, in the earlier period, was either not yet composed 
or not yet known. But, if written, could it have failed to escape the 
notice of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, and to leave on them something 
of the mark it made on later literature? (p. 55). 

This argument assumes that there was nothing, except its 
recent origin, to give Deuteronomy the special influence which 
it exerted over later writers. Without, then, pausing to 
show, as we can, that the statement of this influence is mag- 
nified, it is a sufficient answcir to sho^v that this influence can 
be otherwise accounted for. The fact that tiie rediscovery of 
the book after it had been lost to sight so long, and the fact 
that its teaching, whether it was alone or in company with 
the other books of the Pentateuch, was the chief instrument 
in bringing about the most famous reiigious rerformation in 
the history of Israel, necessarily brought it into a relative in- 
fluence which it had not exerted before. There is a parallel 
in the influence exerted by the Epistles to the Romans and 
the Galatians during the life of Luther and afterward. Were 
there any gi-ound for raising a doubt whether Luther and his 
generation possessed all of the books of the Xew Testament, 



20 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

01* whetbetr tJieoe two epistles had not been recently written by 
some theologian in the name of Paul, how readily could crit- 
ics of the modern school take up the cry, and demand. Why, 
if those two epistles existed before Luther's day, did they not 
influence the style and theology of earlier writers, as they 
certainly did those of a later date? The answer would be, 
There was a special reason in the Lutheran Keformation in 
which salvation by works was denied, and salvation by faith 
insisted on, to give new prominence to the two epistles in 
which the latter doctrine is especially emphasized. Just so, 
the Josian reformation was brought about chiefly by the 
teaching and the warnings of Deuteronomy, and this neces- 
sarily drew to this book, rather than to any other then writ- 
ten, the attention of writers in the next generation. So, then, 
this famous argument, which is a favorite with all classes of 
destructive critics, proves to be faulty in the fact that it ig- 
nores completely the real cause of the fact on which it is 
based. 

In order to fix the time previous to which the Book of 
Deuteronomy could not have been written. Professor Ryle in- 
troduces a passage from Isaiah which has been made to figure 
conspicuously in the discussion of this question. He argues 
thus: 

One well-known passage (Isa. xix. 19) should be sufficient to 
disprove the possibility of that prophet's acquaintance with the Deute- 
ronomic law: "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the 
midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar [mazzehah] at the border 
thereof to the Lord." Isaiah could hardly have said this if he had 
been acquainted with the prohibition of Deut. xvi. 22, "Thou shalt 
not set up a pillar imazzebaW]; which the Lord thy God hateth.' 
Nor is the reply satisfactory which says that Isaiah refers to the 
soil, not of Palestine, but of Egypt; for the prophet is contemplating 
a time when all the world should be subject to the "law" of Israel's 
God. It would appear, therefore, that the Deuteronomic "book of 
the law" was not known to Isaiah or his prophetic predecessors, and 
could hardly have been written before the reign of Hezekiah. When, 
in addition to this, the marked characteristics of his style correspond 
to those which are found in the Hebrew writing of the sixth and 
latter part of the seventh century B. C, it is the most natural con- 
clusion that the literary framework of the book is not to be placed 
earlier than the close of Isaiah's ministry i^circ. 690 B. C). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 21 

In this argument the author starts out as if there was 
no possibility of his being mistaken. The passage in Isaiah 
^^should be sufficient to disprove the possiibility" of his ac- 
quaintance with I>euteronomy. But in his next sentence he 
lowers his tone and says, "Isaiah could hardly have said this 
if he had been acquainted with the prohibition of Deut. xvi. 
22." And his conclusion is based on the latter assertion, and 
not on the former. Leaving off the question of possibility, 
he says, "Deuteronomy could hardly have been written before 
the reign of Hezekiah." Such a play of diminuendo as the 
argument advances is cleiar evidence that the man who framed 
it began with a confidence which he could not maintain to 
the eoid. 

But let us see whether, if Isaiah had known intimately 
the prohibition of the mazzehah in Deuteronomy, he could 
still have predicted the erection of one at the border of Egypt. 
The obvious ansfwer is. If it w^ere revealed to him that there 
\AOuld be one, of course he could have predicted it. But it is 
assumed that he predicted it with approval, which he could 
not have done had he knoiwn Deuteronomy. The prophet cer- 
tainly does speak of the event as indicating a change in Egypt 
for the bettetr. Taking into view the immediate context, he 
says: "In that day there shall be five cities in the land of 
Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Jeho- 
vah of hosts; one shall be called. The city of destruction. In 
that day there shall be an altar in the midst of the land of 
Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to Jehovah. And 
it shall be for a s.ign and for a witness unto Jehovah of hosts 
in the land of Egypt; for they shall cry unto Jehovah be- 
cause of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and 
a defender, and he shall deliver them.'' This clearly indi- 
cates a time when Egypt should be sore oppressed, and 
should turn to Jehovah for help, offering sacrifice to him, 
and setting up a pillar on the border of the land to honor 
him. Egypt was a land of pillars, or obelisks, as the word 
is rendered on the margin of the Revised Version, all erected 
in honor of their gxxis, and inscribed on their sides with the 



22 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

praises of tke god wlioaii each soiiglit to honour. Now, if, in 
a time of distress, seeing the impoitancy of all her gods, Egypt 
should erect an obelisk in honor of Jehovah, the act Avould be 
a happy move in the right direction, no matter how abomi- 
nabk such a pillar might be beside a Jewish altar. She was 
also to erect an altar to Jehovah. Suppose that on this altar 
they offered the sacrifices to which they were accustomed, but 
which would have defiled a Jewish altar, and the text indi- 
cates nothing to the contrary; still Egypt would be congratu- 
lated for doing even this with the purpo^se of honoring Jeho- 
vah. Isaiah, then, could have written all that he did with a 
lull knowledge of what is said about the mazzehah in Deu- 
teronomy. 

Let us now give more partioiilar attention to the prohibi- 
tion in Deuteronomy, and see whether, in the argument under 
consideration, it is properly interpreted. The subject of the 
mazzehah is mentioned twice in this part of the book; first in 
xii. 2, 3, where it is said, ''Ye shall surely destroy all the places, 
wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, 
upon the high mountainsi, and upon the hills, and under every 
green tree: and ye shall break down their altars-, and dash in 
pieces their pillars [mazzehahs'] , and bum their Asherim with 
fire." Xow, this portion of Deuteronomy has the form of a 
discourse; and whether it was delivered by Moses as the text 
affirms, or written in the time of Hezekiah and put into the 
lips of Moses by imagination, the speaker, real or imaginary, 
after uttering the words just quoted, uttered, in less than ten 
minutes later, these words: "Thou shalt not plant thee an 
Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Jehovah thy 
God, which thou shalt make thee. ISTeither shalt thou set vip 
a pillar [^mazzehah'] ; which Je'hovah thy God hateth" (xvi. 21, 
22). Can w& imagine that there was no connection of thought 
between the two prohibitions? Is it not morally certain that 
the Asherah and the pillar in both passages mean the same? 
And, if so, are we not compelled by the laws of interpretation, 
to understand that, in the latter passage as in the former, the 
prohibition is against such mazzehahs as the Canaanites had 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 23 

used, and not against such stmctures when used legitimateh- ( 
The answ'^r which this question demands is implied in the very 
wording of tho text ; for the words, "a pillar which the Lord 
thy God hateth/' leave room for the supposition that there were 
pillars which God did not hate. 

That there were pillars (mazzehahs) which Jehovah did not 
hate, Isaiah knew, and the author of Deuteronomy knew. For 
be it remembered, that even if the Book of Deuteironomy was 
unknown to Isaiah, the documents J and E, and the combined 
document JE, were known both to him and the supposed author 
of Deuteronomy. This the analytical theory teaches. But in 
JE we find several statements about the erection of pillars 
(mazzehahs) by Jacob at Bethel, at Mizpah, and at Rachels 
grave (Gen. xxxiii. 18, 22; xxxi. 45, 51, 52; xxxv. 14, 20). 
Moreover, JE represents God as approving the erection of this 
first mazzehah in saying to Jacob, "I am the God of Bethel, 
where thou anointedst a pillar, wheire thou vowedst a vow unto 
me : now arise, get thee out of this land, and return to the land 
of thy nativity'' (xxxi. 13). In view of this fact, Isaiah must 
have known that there were mazzehahs which God approved ; 
and the supposed author of Deuteronomy knew it as well. Is 
it credible, then, that the latter put into the mouth of Moses, 
speaking for God, a prohibition of aJl mazzehahs? If not, then 
we must believe that the prohibition in question was against 
such mazzehahs as the Canaanites had in use. 

Finally, there is a consideration suggested by the Deute- 
ronomic prohibition which has been entirely overlooked by de- 
structive critics, and yet it completely refutes their theory as to 
the date of the book. Here is a book which forbids absolutely 
the erection of an altar to Jehovah other than the one at his 
chosen place of worship ; a book written with this as one of its 
primary purposes, if not the chief purpo'se; yet in the midst 
of it we read these words: "Thou shalt not plant thee an 
Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Jehovah thy God 
which thou shalt make thee." l^otice the future tense: "The 
altar of Jehovah thy God which thou shalt make thee." The 
altar in question was yet to be made when the book was ^^'Titten. 



24 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

If Moses wrote tlie book, this is what he^ would have said : for 
the altar spoken of was that in Jerusalem, or both that and the 
earlier altar at Shiloh. The Jerusalem altar was, too, accord- 
ing to hypothesis, the one at which the author of Deuteronomy 
sought to concentrate the worship as the only altar of Jehovah. 
This altar had been made hundreds of years before this hypo- 
thetical date of Deuteronomy, yet the writer speaks of it a,s ^^the 
altar of Jehovah thy God which thou shalt make thee/' What 
clearer demonstration could we have that the book was written 
before the altar in Jerusalem was madei ; that is, before the reign 
of Solomon ? And if it was before the reign of Solomon, there 
can be no reason for giving it a date later than Moses. This 
argument can be set aside only by charging the author with 
fraud in putting these words in the mouth of Moses. 

I have dealt thus elaborately with this argument, from the 
consideration that it is made use of by all the destructive critics 
without an apparent suspicion that any fallacy could be found 
in it. The result illustrates the importance of the closest scru- 
tiny of every argument and every passage of Scripture before 
concluding that it contains anything inimical to the Bible's own 
account of itself. 

If it is true, as asserted by Professor Ryle, that the Book 
of Deuteronomy, when discovered by Hilkiah the priest, "was 
the first instance of a book which was regarded by all, king, 
priests, prophets, and people alike, as invested not only with 
sanctity, but also with supreme authority in all matters of relig- 
ion and conduct," it becomes a matter of supreme importance 
to account in some satisfactory way for such a reception of the 
book. But even his strong statement of the case falls sihort of 
the reality. The book was not only regarded as invested with 
sanctity and supreme authority, but it was regarded as having 
come from Moses ; and it was this last consideration which gave 
it its sanctity and authority. This must all be accounted for 
in order to make the critical theory of its origin credible. The 
necessity of this can not have escaped the minds of the acute 
scholars who have advocated this theory, and one would expect 
to find in their writings some plausible if not convincing attempt 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 25 

at an answer. But on tiiis point I have searched their writings 
in vain. Pi-ofessor Ryle shows clearly that he felt the need of 
sucii an explanation, and through several pages of his Canon 
he feels around the question without fairly facing it As you 
read through these pages in sea.rch of it, you are inclined to 
exclaim alternately, "Now I see it, now I don't see it." The 
nearest he comes to it is on page 60, where he formally raises 
the question only to immediately run away from it^ Having 
fixed the date of its composition in the closing years of Heze- 
kiah's reign, he says : 

Nor is it difficult to understand how such a work, during the re- 
actionary reign of Manasseh, became lost to view. That its acci- 
dental discovery in the eighteenth year of King Josiah produced so 
astonishing an effect can well be imagined. 

Of course it can. We can easily imagine almost anything. 
But we have no need to imagine it; it is plainly told in the text, 
and nobody calls the record in question. What we desire is not 
to imagine it, but to account for it. And how does our learned 
author do this ? Here is what follows : 

The evils which the prophet or writers had sought to combat, 
had grown in intensity during the seventy or eighty years which 
had elapsed. The reform, so necessary before, culminating in the 
abolition of the high places, which Hezekiah had failed to carry out 
successfully, had now been long delayed; the difficulty of effecting it 
must have become proportionately greater; the flagrant indulgence 
in open idolatry, under the patronage of the court, had raised yet 
more serious obstacles in the path of religious restoration. In a sin- 
gle year "the book of the law" caused the removal of every obstacle. 
The laws it contained must, many of them, have been familiar, by 
tradition, long usage, and written codes. But in this book, laws, 
old and new alike, lived in the spirit of Moses, and glowed with 
the spirit of prophecy. The tone in which the law was here ex- 
pounded to the people was something new. It marked the close ot 
one era; it heralded the beginning of another. It rang sharp and 
clear in the lull that so graciously intervened before the tempest 
of Babylonian invasion, ihe enthusiasm it aroused in the young 
king communicated itself to the people. The discovery of "the book 
of the law" procured at once the abolition of the high places. The 
book was recognized as a divine gift, and lifted, though but for a 
passing moment, the conception of the nation's religion above the 
routine of the priesthood's traditional worship. 

I search in vain, thi'ough all this, for even a semblance of 
an answer to the question, How can the reception accorded the 



26 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

book be accounted for? If Hezekiab's attempt to abolish the 
high places had failed, this would make it only the more diffi- 
cult for this book to cause their removal; and this the author 
freely admits. He also admits, or, rather, he tells us in plain 
words, that the indulgence in opeai idolatry under the patronage 
of the court had raised "yet more serious obstacles'' in the path 
of religious restoration. This only makes moi'e imperative the 
demand for the explanation which is called for, but not given. 

'Next we are told what we knew before, that "in a single 
year ^the book of the law' caused the removal of every obstacle ;" 
and this only intensifies our desire to know how it succeeded 
in doing so. ^ext we are toid that "the laws it contained must, 
many of them, have been familiar, by tradition, long usage, and 
written codes." But, if they ^^re, why was the king so aston- 
ished at them, and why did he rend his clothes ? "But," con- 
tinues our author, "in this book, laws, old and new alike, lived 
in the spirit of Moses, and glowed with the vehemence of proph- 
ecy." Yes ; they not only lived in the spirit of Moses, but they 
professedly came from the very lips of Moses ; and the question 
is, How were king and priests and prophets and people alike led 
to believe that they came from Moses, when many of them, and 
especially the most objectionable of them all, had never been 
heard of before ? This is the question to be answered, and the 
author's attempt only heaps up, statement by statement, the ob- 
stacles in the way of a satisfactory answer. 

Again he says, "The tone in which the law was here 
expounded to the people was something new." But it claimed 
to be as old as Moses ; how, then, could it be something new ? 
And if it was something new, why did neither king, nor priest, 
nor prophet, nor one of the people, see in the fact that it was 
new, incontestable proof that it was not spoken by Moses ? But, 
"it marked the close of one era; it heralded the beginning of 
another." Suppose it did ; how could all parties know this, and 
why should this have made them think that the book came from 
Moses ? But, "it rang sharp and clear in the lull that so gra- 
ciously intervened before the tempest of Babylonian invasion ;" 
and "the enthusiasm it aroused in the young king communicated 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 27 

itself to the people." Yes; but why did it arousei any enthusi- 
asni in the young king ? And what if it did ring in that lull 'i 
If the king had suspected that the book was recently written, 
wmild it have aroused in him this enthusiasm ? Would it have 
made him rend his clothes ? Finally we are told tliat "the book 
was recognized as a divine gift, and lifted, though but foa* a pass- 
ing moment, the conception of the nation's religion above the 
priesthood's traditional worship." Of co'urse, the book was 
received as a divine gift ; but the question is. Why ? And this 
question is not answered. Ro'bcTtson Smith attempts an answer 
in these words : 

The authority that lay behind Deuteronomy was the power of 
the prophetic teaching which half a century of persecution had not 
been able to suppress (0. T., 363). 

But the "prophetic teaching," according to hypothesis, and 
according to Robertson Smith himself, had been absolutely silent 
about the restriction of sacrifice to a single altar, and hostile to 
sacrifices in general. This is, then, no answer to the question. 
On the critical hypothesis as to the OTigin of the book, may we 
not here venture the assertion that it can not be answered ? In 
view of the utter failure of the ablest critics thus far to find an 
adequate answer, may we not safely conclude that one will never 
be f oimd ? 

There is another obstacle in the way of the answer demanded 
which is insuperable, and which has been created by the critics 
themselves. They tell us that the documents J and E had been 
written some hundred years or more before the discovery by Hil- 
kiah, and they tell us that the laws of the "book of the covenant" 
embodied in Ex. xx.-xxiii. were preserved in J, and had 
come down from Moses. They tell us that in that book the 
law guaranteed to every Hebrew the right to build an altar and 
offer his sacrifice at any spot which he might choose — that this 
had been God's recog-nized and well-known law do^vn to the very 
day in which Hilkiah's discovery was made. But here a newly 
written book of the law is produced, which contradicts all this, 
and teaches that it is a sin to offer sacrifices on any other altar 
than the one in Jei-usalem. And when this newly written law, 



^8 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

contradicting what all tlie people liad hitherto received as the 
law of God, was road to the king, he re<nt his clothes ; and when 
he read it to the people, they entered into a covenant with him 
to tear down all of the altars at which they had hitherto wor- 
shiped according to God's undisputed law. How can this be 
accounted for ? They obey the new law because they are led to 
believe that it came from Moses, and they reject the old law 
though they believed that it also came from Moses. Did they 
think that Moees contradicted himself ? If so, why, of the two 
contradictory laws, did they accept the one newly brought to 
light, the one never heard of before, and the one most obnoxious 
to their cherished habits ? Who will answer these questions, or 
who will show, if they remain unansAvered, that the new theory 
of the origin of Deuteronomy is worth the paper it is printed 
on ? I knew a preacher who became insane and imagined that 
he was made of glass. He would not allow you to shake hands 
with him — only a gentle touch. And when he took a seat in a 
woodein chair ho was very careful lest he should break himself 
to pieces. This critical theory of Deuteronomy reminds me of 
him. Wherever you shake it, it breaks.^ 

§2. Evidence from Conflict with Previous 
Legislation. 

It is held by those who advocate the late date of Deuteron- 
omy, that the previously existing law contained in the book JE, 
which was really given by Moses, if Moses gave any law at all, 
permitted the people to erect altars wherever they chose, and 
that the law in Deuteronomy was intended to abolish that priv- 
ilege. Sacrifice in the hig'h places had been perfectly legitimate 
under this law, but it was now to be abolished by force of this 
newly discovered "book of the law." By Robertson Smith the 
position is stated in the following words : 

^ For the arguments of other authors on the evidence discussed 
in this section, see Driver, Int., 86-89; Robertson Smith, 0. T., 256f.. 
363; Addis, D. of H., Ixxv.; Andrew Harper, Com. Deut., 29-33; Prin- 
cipal Douglas, Lex M., 63-67; Stanley Leathes, Lex .M., 443ff.; Robert 
Sinker, Lex M., 462ff., 480; James Robertson, Early Rel. of Israel, 421; 
Bissell, 0. and S. of Pmt., 23. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 29 

The central difference between the Deuteronomic code, on which 
Josiah acted, and the code of the First Legislation, lies in the prin- 
ciple that the temple at Jerusalem is the only legitimate sanctuary. 
The legislator in Deuteronomy expressly puts forth this ordinance 
as an innovation: "Ye shall not do, as we do here this day, every 
man whatever is right in his own eyes" — Deut. xii. 8 (0. T., p. 253). 

A little reflection will show that this position, though put 
forward as if it w^ere unquestionable, can not be maintained. 
In the first place, if such were the facts in the case, the friends 
and supporters of the high places, who are admitted to have 
been exceedingly reluctant to give them up, could and would 
have successfully answered: We are not doing whatsoever is 
right in our own eyes ; but that which Jehovah our God gave us 
permission to do by the hand of Moses. This new law, therer 
fore, pretending to come from the same Moses, a law which no 
Israelite has ever heard of before, is false and spurious. We 
will have none of it. They could have said, We have the old 
Mosaic law written in our sacred books ; it is a part of the book 
of the covenant given by God to our fathers; and it is also 
written with indelible letters in our ancestral customs; and we 
shall not be deceived into the belief that this hitherto unknown 
book, with its innovation, has also been our law from the begin- 
ning. What answer could Josiah, or any of his officers sent out 
to tear down the altars on the high places, have made to this? 
They would have been as dumb as the stooies of the altars which 
they destroyed. 

In the second place, the supposed writer of Deuteronomy 
could not, without barefaced folly, have put the words of this 
restrictive law into the mouth of Moses. He would have had 
Moses legislating against a further continuance of worship 
which as yet had no existence in Israel ; for it certainly had no 
existence among them while Moses was still alive. When, then, 
Hilkiah's book was presented to the first man of sense on his 
high place, he would have responded : "Do you think I am a 
fool, to give up my chosen place of worshiping the God of our 
fathers in compliance with a book pretending that Moses for- 
bade our fathers to continue in the practice, w^hen, as a matter 
of fact, our fathers had never engaged in it?" The pretense 



so THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

would strike them ve;ry much as if some unscrupulous politician 
should now publish a copy of Washington's farewell address 
with a warning in it against the adoption of the Australian 
secret ballot in our elections. Such are the absurdities, unpeir- 
ceived by themselves, in which critics become involved when 
they permit their zeal in support of a theory to run away with 
their better reason. 

If it should be asked, in response to the preceding, Avhat 
practice was it that Moses had reference to when he said, "Ye 
shall not do as we do here this day,'' the answer is, first, he cer- 
tainly did not mean what the men of Josiah's day, seven hun- 
dred years later, would be doing, but something that men were 
doing in his own day. Second, when Moses spoke, the people 
addressed had only a few weeks before been guilty of wander- 
ing off with the women of Moab and engaging with them in the 
worship of Baal-peor (^um. xxv.) ; and this piece of self-will 
in worship, which had cost the lives of twenty-four thousand 
men, was fresh in their memories. Thus we see that if the law 
was given by Mosee., all that is said about it agrees with the facts 
in the case ; and if it was not, everything is thrown into confu- 
sion and absurdity. 

Professor Driver's statement of the position is not stronger 
than that of Professor Smith. Here it is : 

The law of Deuteronomy thus marks an epoch in the history of 
Israelitish religion; it springs from an age when the old law (Ex. 
XX. 24), sanctioning an indefinite number of local sanctuaries, had 
been proved to be incompatible with purity of worship; it marks 
the final, the most systematic effort made by the prophets to free the 
public worship of Jehovah from heathen accretions (Com. Deut., 
138). 

This is a more cautious statement than that of Kobertson 
Smith, but it is not less objectionable. It represents a law 
given by divine wisdom — for Driver recognizes the divine origin 
of the old book of the covenant — as proving to be "incompatible 
with purity of Avorship." This is an absurdity. It also repre- 
sents the king and the people as promptly abandoning a fonn 
of worship that was lawful, the law for which had been given 
by God through Moses, and to which the masses of the people 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 31 

had become devotedly attached, on tlie demand of a new law, 

pretending to come from Moses, but which had really never been 

heard of before. Xo people in the history of the world was ever 

thus deluded. The incredibility of such a deception is increased 

when we add that never afterward was any question raised in 

Israel as to the Mosaic origin of this new law. If the hypothesis 

is accepted, it reverses the notable saying of President Lincoln, 

that ''you can fool some of the people all the time, and aJl of 

the people part of the time, but you can not fool all the people 

all the time." 

Both of these scholars, in common with all the critics of 

their class, assume, as if it were an undisputed fact, that the 

first legislation permitted a mu'ltiplicity of altars to be erected, 

and sacrifice to be offered on them wherever it suited the good 

pleasure of the worshipers ; and for this reason they claim that 

worship on the high places, ''on every high hill and under every 

green tree," was legitimate until the publication of the law in 

Deuteronomy, Avhich limited all sacrifices to the single altar in 

Jerusalem. The question whether this assumption is true or 

not can be settled only by an appeal to the terms of the law 

itself.' We quote it in full : 

And Jehovah said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the chil- 
dren of Israel, Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you 
from heaven. Ye shall not make other gods with me; gods of silver, 
or gods of gold, ye shall not make unto you. An altar shalt thou 
make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, thy 
peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where 1 
record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. And 
if thou make an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn 
stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. 
Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy naked- 
ness be not discovered thereon" (Ex. xx. 22-26). 

This, if we may believe the record in Exodus, is the law of 

sacrifice delivered at the foot of Mt. Sinai (cf. 18-21). Does 

it authorize a multitude of altars at as many different places? 

or one altar at a time ? The word "altar" is in the singular 

number, and the people are addressed as one individual: "An 

altar of earth shalt thou make unto me." Evidently the one 

people were to make the one altar ; and it is impossible that the 

multiplicity of simultaneous altars in use at the alleged date of 



32 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Deuteronomy would have been justified by this law. But the 
altar was to be made of earth or of stone, and consequemtly it 
could not be moved. If, then, after the first one was built under 
this law, another should be needed at another place, it would 
have to be erected as was the first. This brings us to the ques- 
tion of place, and to the second provision of the law : ^^In every 
place where I record my name I will come unto thee and bless 
thee." Though not expressed, it is here implied that in these 
places the aforesaid altar would be erected. But Israel as a 
people could be in only one place at a time, and consequently 
the places contemplated are consecutive and not simultaneous 
places of worship. With this the subsequent history of Israel 
perfectly agrees. The altar of wooden boards covered with brass 
which Moses constructed before leaving Mt, Sinai (Ex. xxvii. 
1-8), instead of being in conflict with this law, as has been al- 
leged, was strictly in conformity with it. An altar of earth, if 
used more than once, would be constantly crumbling, and one of 
unhewn stones would be constantly falling. E'edther would be 
at all suitable for continued use. Consequently, as Mr. Fergu- 
son has conclusively shown in Smith's Bible Dictionarv^, the 
structure made by Moses, which was nothing but a hollo^v box 
without top or bottom, was only a case within which the real 
altar was made, and which held it, whether made of earth or of 
rough stones, in proper shape, while it gave the structure a 
smooth exterior. By itself it was not an altar at all ; for it pro- 
vided no place on which the fire could be built and the victims 
burned. If the fire had been built inside of it, as has been sup- 
posed, it would have charred the wood through the thin plates 
of brass, and ruined the structure. But when the case was 
placed on a level piece of ground, and filled with earth, or with 
stones, the law was complied with, and the altar was held in 
proper shape for any length of time. When the place of en- 
campment was changed, the priests, by means of the strong 
wooden bars passed through rings on the outside of the case, 
lifted the latter away from the enclosed earth or stones, and left 
the altar to crumble. This one altar at a time, frequently 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 33 

renewed, vet always the same in exterior appearance and form, 
was tche altar of Israel, according to the history, throughooit the 
desert wanderings, throughout the period of Joshua and the 
judges, and on to the erection of Solomon's temple. It is only 
by impeaching the sacred records that this can be denied. And 
if this is the truth respeeting the first legislation about the altar 
and the place of worship, the only difference between this law 
and that in Deuteronomy is that in the latter the exclusiveness 
of the law is made more emphatic. 

Another evidence of the j)erfect unity of these tw^o laws is 
found in the words used in common respecting the place of w^or- 
ship. In Exodus the wx>rds are, '^In every place where I record 
my name I will come unto thee, and I w^ill bless thee." In Deu- 
teronomy, ^'But unto the place which Jehovah, your God shall 
choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto 
his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come.'' The 
latter contains no verbal quotation from the former, but it is 
evidently intended to explain it^ Where the former has, "In 
every place where I record my name^," the latter has, "Unto the 
place which Jehovah your God shall choose" — choosing a place 
for his worship, explains tJie expression, "record my name." 
The only difference is that in the older law it is implied that 
he might record his name in more than one place, whereas in 
the latter he is to choose one place. And this agrees with the 
history ; for when they came into Canaan God first recorded his 
name at Shiloh, where the tabernacle with the ark of the cove- 
nant in it w^as located by Joshua, and remained till after the 
capture of the ark by the Philistines (Josh, xviii. 1 ; I. Sam. 
iv. 11 — V. 1). Afterwards Jerusalem was chosen, and this is 
the one sanctuary to which, according to all classes of critics, 
the words of Deuteronomy have reference. 

Prof. William Henry Green has spoken so well on the 

alleged discrepancy between these two laws, that I here quote 

him in full: 

There is no such difference as is pretended between the book of 
the covenant and the other Mosaic codes in respect to the place of 
legitimate sacrifice. It is not true that the former sanctioned a mul- 



34 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tiplicity of altars, and that this was the recognized practice of pious 
worshipers of Jehovah until the reign of Josiah, and that he insti- 
tuted a new departure from all previous law and custom by restrict- 
ing sacrifice to one central altar in compliance with a book of the 
law then for the first time promulgated. The unity of the altar was 
the law of Israel's life from the beginning. Even in the days of 
the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, no such thing was known 
as separate rival sanctuaries for the worship of Jehovah, co-existing 
in various parts of the land. They built altars and offered sacrifice 
in whatever part of the land they might be, and particularly in 
places where Jehovah appeared to them. But the patriarchal fam- 
ily was a unit, and while they worshiped in different places, succes- 
sively in the course of their migrations, they nevertheless worshiped 
in but one place at a time. They did not offer sacrifice contempora- 
neously on different altars. So with Israel in their marches through 
the wilderness. They set up their altar wherever they encamped, 
at various places successively, but not in more than one place at 
the same time. This is the state of things which is recognized and 
made legitimate in the book of the covenant. In Ex. xx. 24 the Isra- 
elites are authorized to erect an altar, not wherever they may please, 
but "in all places where God records his name." The critics inter- 
pret this as a direct sanction given to various sanctuaries in differ- 
ent parts of Palestine. There is no foundation whatever for such 
an interpretation. There is not a word here nor anywhere in Scrip- 
ture from which the legitimacy of the multitudinous sanctuaries of 
a later time can be inferred. An altar is lawful, and sacrifice upon 
it acceptable, and God will there meet with his people and bless 
them, only where he records his name; not where men may utter 
his name, whether by invocation or proclamation, but where God 
reveals or manifests himself {H. C. of P., 147, 148). 

§3. Evidence from Disregard of a Cen^tral Sanctuary. 

It is argued that if the restrictive law in Deuteronomy had 
been known from the time of Moses onward, or if the law in 
Exodus had been understood as restricting sacrifice to one altar 
at a time, we should be able to find traces of this restriction be- 
tween the time of Moses and the time of Josiah. But it is 
alleged that, on the contrary, even the best of men in that 
interval built altars and ofitered sacrifices without regard to such 
a law, and in direct opposition to it; and that they did this 
without apology or rebuke. Professor Driver, in the condensed 
style which is habitual with him, states the argument in the 
following words: 

In these books (Joshua — I. Kings) sacrifices are frequently 
described as offered ia different parts of the land, without any indi- 
cation (and this is the important fact) on the part of either the 
actor or the narrator that such a law as that of Deuteronomy is being 



^HE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 35 

infringed. After the exclusion of all uncertain or exceptional cases, 
such as Judg. ii. 5; vi. 20-24, where the theophany may be held to 
justify the erection of an altar, there remain, as instances of either 
altars or local sanctuaries. Josh. xxiv. 26; I. Sam. vii. 9, 17; ix. 12-14; 
X. 3, 5, 8; xiii. 9; xi. 15; xiv. 35; xx. 6; II. Sam. xv. 12, 32. 

The author properly recognizes in these instances t^vo dis- 
tinct groups, distinguished hy the fact that the former were 
accompanied hy theophanies, or visihle appearances of divine 
messengers, under whose command or with who&e approval the 
altars were erected. Tlie instances referred to under this heiad 
are those of the people assembled at Bochim, and of Gideon at 
Ophrah. He might have added that of Manoah at Zorah 
(Judg. xiii. 15-20). Of these he speaks cautiously. He styles 
them '^mcertain or exceptional cases." What he means by "un- 
certain" I do not know, unless he is uncertain whether they 
actually occurred ; but they were undoubtedly exceptional. His 
admission that if they did occur as described "the theophany 
may be held to have justified the erection of an altar," renders 
it unnecessary for me to discuss them so far as Professor Driver 
is concerned, but not so far as respects the great majority of his 
felloAv critics ; for they deny the reality of theophanies, and hold 
that these altars were erected, if at all, on the responsibility of 
the men themselves. For this reason we shall consider the bear- 
ing which these cases have on the main question as if no concesr 
sion had been made. 

As respects the sacrifice at Bochim, the facts revealed in the 
context (Judg. ii. 1-5) are these: The people of Israel were 
assembled at a place which, at the time of their assembling, bore 
no distinctive name. For what purpose they had assembled we 
are not informed. It may have been for some political purpose, 
or it may have been for public worship. The angel of Jehovah 
came from Gilgal to this place, and rebuked the people for hav- 
ing made peace with the Canaanites contrary to the command 
of Jehovah. The people wept under the rebuke, and offered 
sacrifices unto Jehovah. Because of the weeping, they gave the 
name Bochim (weepers) to the place. There is not a word 
said about erecting an altar, although no sacrifice could be 
offered without one. The natural inference is that the taber- 



S6 fHl^ AUTHORSHIP OF 

nacle, with its altar, was close by the place of assembly. A case 
of erecting an altar distinct from tlie one at Shiloh is therefore 
not made out. Critics who claim to be scientific shoiuld remem- 
her that to draw conclusions from facts which are assumed, and 
can not be proved, is anything else than scientific. 

As respects Gideoai's altar and sacrifice, the case is made out, 
and made out ^ery plainly. When the angel of Jehovah had 
appeared to him, given him his commission to deliver Israel 
from the Midianites, had set fire to the stewed kid and bread 
by touching them with the point of his staff, and had disap- 
peared, Gideooi built an altar on the spot, and called it Jehovah- 
shalom ; but he built it as a monument, and not for the purpose 
of offering sacrifice on it. He offered none. Within the same 
night, howe\^eir, Jehovah commanded him, per'haps by the mouth 
of the same angel, to take his father's seven-year-old bullock to 
the top of the hill where was an altar of Baal, to tear do'wn the 
latter and build in its place an altar to Jehovah, and offer on 
it the bullock. All this Gideon did, and he did it>, as the morn- 
ing light revealed, at the imminent peril of his life. Does this 
prove that the Book of Deuteronomy, with its law against the 
erection of other altars than the one at the central sanctuaiy, 
was unkno^\m to Gideon ? Suppose that he had known a book 
which had this law written on e^^ery page, would he have disr 
obeyed Jehovah himself Avhen he gave him this special com- 
mand ? I presume that when Abraham was commanded to sac- 
rifice his son Isaac, he knew very well that it was contrary to 
God's will that a man should kill his own son; yet I presume 
that later Bible writers and speakers, including Jesus and the 
apostles, have been right in admiring Abraliam's obedience to 
the divine command. If Gideon had sense enough to know 
which was his father's seven-year-old bullock, he had sense 
enough to know that he who makes a law has the right to make 
exceptions to it. I wonder if our scientific critics do not 
knor^v this. 

In the case of Manoah, no altar was erected, though the nat- 
ural rock on which his offering Avas laid is called an altar. He 
proposed to prepare a kid for the angel of Jehovah to eat ; but 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 37 

the latter said : ^'Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy 
bread ; and if thou wilt make ready a burntroffering, thoai must 
offer it unto Jehovah." This gave to Manoah express permis- 
sion to offer a burnt offering; and consequently, when the kid 
and meal were brought, he offered both u]X)n the rock to- Jehovah. 
He set fire to his offering, and when the flame went up, the 
angel went up in it. By this Manoah knew that his visitor w^as 
the angel of Jehovah, and his offering had the angel's approval. 

On presenting the facts with reference to these three offer- 
ings in a lecture, I w^as once asked how God could thus make 
exceptions to his law, consistently with Paul's warning to the 
Galatians, ''Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach 
to you any gospel other than that we preached, let him be 
anathema." I answered that making exceptions in laws which 
were made to be abolished is quite a different thing from pear- 
verting the everlasting gospel. This answer is sufficiooit.^ 

Let us now examine the second group of passages cited by 
Professor Driver in proof of his allegation. The first is Josh. 
xxiv. 1, 26. Here in verse 1 we learn tliat Joshua gathered the 
tribes together at Shechem, and called for the chief men, and, 
it is said, ^'they presented themselves before God." This last 
clause, taken in connection mth the statement in verse 26 that 
Joshua took a great stone and set it up there, under the oak that 
was ^'by the sanctuary of Jehovah," is claimed as proof that 
there was a sanctuary at Shechem, at which the chief men pre- 
sented themselves before God. It certainly proves this. But 
the thing to be proved is that an altar was erected there and 
sacrifices offered on it. Of this there is not a word in the text 
or the context. A sanctuary is any holy place ; and, as Abraham 
had once sojourned here ; as Jacob had once bought a piece of 
land here, on which he resided until the slaughter of the Shech- 
cinites by his sons; as Joseph's mummy was buried here, and as 
here Joshua himself had erected a monumental altar, on which 
were inscribed the Ten Commandments — it is not surprising 

'For other grounds of justification in this case, see J. J. Lias, 
Lex M., 263f., 266; Principal Douglas, Lex M., 266; Bissell, 0. and S. 
of Pent., 356ff. 



38 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

that some particular spot here, overshadowed by a magnificent 
oak, was known as a sanctuary. If Peter, e^en. under the Chris- 
tian dispensation, styled the Mount of Transfiguration ''the holy 
mount," why may not a place at which so many solemn events 
had transpired have been called a sanctuary or holy placei, 
though no sacrifice was O'ffered there ? It is clear, then, that 
Driver's first citation has no bearing whatever upon his proposi- 
tion. Strange that so good a marksman made so -wild a shot ! 

But three of the others are equally wild. One (I. Sam. xiii. 
9-14) is the sacrifice offered by King Saul at Gilgal, which was 
condemned so severely by Samuel, that, in the name of Jehovah, 
he said, ''iSTow, thy kingdom shall not continue." Anotheir (I. 
Sam. xiv. 35) is the erection by Saul of an altar on the spot 
where the pursuit of the Philistines ended at the closo of the 
day of his rash vow. But here he offered no sacrifice, and the 
altar was evidently intended as a monument. It is called in 
the text the first altar that Saul built; and this shows that 
the altar on which he had made offerings at Gilgal was not 
built by him, but was one that pre-existed. The third wild shot 
is the reference (II. Sam. xv. 12, 32) to the sacrifices offered, 
by Absalom at Hebron, when inaugurating the rebellion against 
his father; and to the statement in connection with David's 
flight from Jerusalem, that he came to the top of the ascent of 
the Mount of Olives, 'Svhere God was worshiped." In the last 
instance nothing is said about an altar or a sacrifice ; everybody 
knows, who knows David, that he could worship God without 
either; and the first instance was a piece of hypocrisy on the 
part of Absalom, which he would have perpetrated, in defiance 
of such a law as that in Deuteronomy, with as little hesitation 
as he perpetrated his other crimes. His father's assent to it 
was an act of weak indulgence toward a wayward son who 
seemed now to manifest some gratitude toward God. 

There remain, then, out of the nine passages cited by Driver 
in support of his proposition only the five which spe^ak 
plainly of sacrifices being offered in varioiis places by 
the prophet Samuel. This reminds me to say that it 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 3'J 

is quite a custom with the destructive critics — and not 
less so with Driver than with others — to string out a 
long list of passages in support of a proposition, many of 
which, as in this instance, are totally irrelevant. The reader 
who is not familiar with the Scriptures, and is either too indo- 
lent or too busy to hunt up the passages, takes it for granted 
that the gi'^at scholar knows what is in his proof-texts, and 
that the proof is doubtless there. This, whether intended so 
or not, is a kind of confidence game, by which careless and 
too confiding readers are deceived. 

What have we to say now about the fact, well known and 
never disputed, that during the public ministry of the prophet 
Samuel he offered sacrifices on altars erected at various places, 
and never offered any, so far as the history informs us, on the 
altar before the door of the tabernacle, where the law in Deu- 
teronomy requires that they should be offered ? Does it prove 
that he kne\v not the Book of Deuteronomy, and that, therefore, 
it had not yet been written ? 

I answer, first, that if Samuel was an inspired prophet, the 
fact that he was guided in all his official acts by the Spirit of 
God, even though some of these acts did infringe a ceremonial 
law, is his complete justification. They were instances, like 
those in connection with the theophanies mentioned above, in 
which God, not now by angels, but by his Holy Spirit, made 
exceptions to his own law. To the rationalists, who are the 
real authors of this argumentation, this answer amounts to noth- 
ing, because they deny the reality of such inspiration. But to 
men who believe in the divine inspiration of the prophets, this 
answer is conclusive. It shows that Samuel may have had the 
Book of Deuteronomy in his hand every day of his life, and may 
yet have done as he did. This consideration also justifies Sam- 
uel, though not a priest, in performing priestly functions, as it 
aftersvard justified him in assuming military command and civil 
jurisdiction. (See I. Sam. vii. 5-17.) 

But it must be admitted that such and so many exceptions 
to a divine law woxild be extremely improbable under ordinary 



40 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

circumstanoes. It is propea-, tJien, in order to a complete under- 
standing O'f the prophet's course, to inquire whether there were 
extraordinary circumstances then existing which furnished an 
occasion for these exceptional proceedings. 

Samuel's first sacrifice was offered at Mizpah about twenty 
years after the capture of the ark by the Philistines. (I. Sam. 
vii. 5-9 ; cf. chap, ii.) This was when he was about twenty-five 
years of age. If any sacrifices had been offered a-nywhe-re within 
those twenty years, the record is silent with respect to them. 
At the beginning of this period, and for a considerable time 
previous to it, a state of things existed in Israel never known 
before, and never experienced afterward. The tabernacle, with 
the altar built by Moses in front of it, then stood at Shiloh. (I. 
Sam. i. 3.) Hophni and Phinehas were officiating as priests, 
their father, Eli, being high priest. The former appear to have 
been the only priests then officiating. Such was> and had been 
their sacrilegious conduct that ^'men abhorred, the offering of 
Jehovah'' (ii. 17). If they abhorred it, they did not, of course, 
participate in it. This statement shows that at this time the 
men of Israel in general, but with exceptions to be mentioned 
presently, had ceased to bring offerings to the altar, and this 
best explains the fact that only two priests were officiating. 

The crimes which had disgnisted the people in general, and 
driven them away from the public worship of God, are speci- 
fied. When a worshiper would slay his peace-offering, and give 
the priests their legal portion of it, the latter would demand 
still more of the flesh while it was raw, and then, while the 
portion belonging to the offerer was boiling, they would send a 
servant with a three-pronged flesh-hook in hand, and whatever 
flesh would be dra^vn up by this when thrust into the vessel, 
would be taken to the priests (ii. 12-17).^ How many men of 

' "It is difficult to understand, if the provisions of the Mosaic law 
were not yet in existence, (1) what was the precise sin of Hophni and 
Phinehas — supposing them to have existed and to have committed any 
sin — which called for so severe a punishment; and (2) if they were 
fabulous characters, what could have induced a historian who desired 
to recommend the regulations which had lately been introduced, to 
represent the priests themselves as having so grossly violated those 
regulations" (J. J. Lias, Lex M., 262, note). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 41 

spirit, after being ti^ated in this manner once, would ever 
return for another offering? The reader can best give an 
answer by saying how often he would return to a church in 
the present day if he was treated in any similar manner by the 
officials of the church. And who would return to church if even 
one of his neighbors or particular friends was dealt with in 
such a manner ? 

But this, though the most insulting to the offerers, was not 
the grossest crime which these abominable priests committed. 
We are told in the text that "they lay with the women, that did 
service at the door of the tent of meeting" (ii. 22). Kight 
there, in the sacred precincts where Jehovah should be adoTed, 
they committed this abomination, not even seeking, as all but 
brute beasts usually do, a secret place fo-r such indulgence. 
What church in the whole of Christendom would be longer fre- 
quented should it be known that the priests or preachers, o^r 
church officers of any grade, who were the guardians of its 
sanctity, were making of it a house of shame? There is evi- 
dence that even the few who did attend the services at Shiloh 
under these circumstances were mostly a class not much better 
than the priests ; for when Eli saw the pious Hannah praying 
earnestly with moving lips, but no audible sonnd, the sight of a 
woman at prayer was so unusual that he thought she was intox- 
icated. The only wonder is that the godly Elkanah still came 
to Shiloh once a year with his family. As to the three annual 
festivals which all the people were required by law to attend, 
it seems that they had fallen into total neglect. 

The infamous conduct of these beastly men reached its cli- 
max, when, with unholy hands, they took the ark of the covenant 
into the battlefield, as if to force God to give Israel a victory 
in order to protect the symbol of his own earthly presence. 
Their own death in the battle, the death of their father and 
of the wife of one of them, the defeat of Israel, and the cap- 
ture of the ark to be made a trophy in the temple of a heathen 
god, were the terrific consequences. The removal of the ark 
was Jehovah's abandonment of the tabernacle which had been 



42 THE AUTHORSHIP OJ^ 

SO grossly profaned, and of tJie people who had ceased to worship 
him. The dying wife of Phinehas, as if with prophetic voice, 
exclaimed, ^The glory has departed from Israel." God pro^ 
tected the ark with ceaseless care, but he never returned to the 
deserted tent of meeting. 

Another consequence followed swiftly upon the preceding. 
The people having been driven from the worship of Jehovah 
by the sacrilege of the priests, and having now been abandoned 
in turn by Jehovah, rushed away, as their custom was, to the 
gods of the heathen (vii. 4). When the ark, guided by the 
almost visible hand of God, returned to Beth-shemesh, after an 
absence of seven months, the people of that town, with a burst 
of enthusiasm, offered burnt offerings and sacrifices before it on 
the same day (vi. 15, 16) ; but if any priest, during the judge- 
ship of Samuel, made an offering before the tabernacle, the fact 
is not recorded. That sacred structure had now become an 
empty shell ; for all that had given it sanctity was gona 

This was the state of things in Israel when Samuel came to 
man's estate. How he had passed those twenty years of dark- 
ness we are not informed. But from the time that he predicted 
the coming fate of Eli's house, "all Israel, from Dan to Beer- 
slieba, knew that Samuel was established to bo a prophet" (I. 
Sam. iii. 20). If he was ^yq years of age at that time, he was 
twenty-five when he found that all the house of Israel, wearied 
with idolatry, began to "lament after Jehovah" (vii. 2). Per- 
haps this change had been brought about by his own, influence. 
He issued a proclamation to all Israel, saying, "If ye do return 
unto Jehovah Avith all your heart, then put away the strange 
gods and the Ashtaroth from you, and prepare your hearts unto 
Jehovah, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of 
the hands of the Philistines." They did this, and he called, 
them together at Mizpah, where he offered for them his first 
burnt offering (vii. 3-9). He then assumed the office of judge, 
and from that day till Saul was fully established on the throne 
he continued to exercise it. 

If Samuel had been so directed by the Spirit of God that 
was in him, he could have brought the ark from Kiriath-jearim, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 43 

replaced it in the tabernacle, hunted up some of the apoetat© 
priests, and s€it the old fo'rm of worship on foot once moTe. The 
fact that he did not do this, but that, on the contrary, he set 
up an altar at Eamah, where he now resided, and occasionally 
built others as circumstances required, shows cleiarly that such 
was the will of God at the time. It might have been his will if 
Deuteronomy had not yet been written, and if the law in Deu- 
.t^ronomy restricting sacrifice to a single altar had been written, 
it might still have been his will as an exception to that law. 
In the latter case, indeed, it was the end of that law so far as 
the altaj at the door of the tabernacle was concerned; for reg- 
ular service at that was not aftei-ward renewed till near the 
close of David's reign, and then for only a few months. Such 
a termination may have been thought wise, partly on account 
of the corruptions of the past, and partly on account of God's 
intended transfer of sacrificial rites to the temple yet to be built. 

Before advancing to the next division of the subject, it is 
well to notice another remark made by Driver with reference 
to the altars erected by Samuel. He says: "The narrator be- 
trays no consciousness of anything irregular or abnormal hav- 
ing occurred." 

In this answer the learned author ignores all the recorded 
facts above recited. Was not the narrator conscious of some- 
thing irregular and abnormal when he narrated with so many 
details the wickedness of Eli's sons ; the consequent abhorrence 
for the service among the people; the solemn rebukes adminisr 
tered to Eli for not restraining his sons ; the capture of the ark 
and its lodgment far from the sanctuary in which it had been 
kept for four centuries? True, he does not say, in so many 
words, that Samuel's disregard of the altar at Shiloh was caused 
by this state of things ; but when be related these irregular and 
abnormal circumstances he had a right to assume that his 
readers would see that they account for the irregular and abnor- 
mal proceedings of the prophet. In fact, his readers did 
recognize this connection of cause and effect, until modem criti- 
cism arose with its passion for controverting all accepted 
truths, and called it in question. 



44 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Let us now turn to the sacrifices which were offered between 
the time of Samuel and the dedication of Solomon's temple. 
First of all, let us trace the history of the tabernacle and its 
altar during this period. When Eli died it was still standing 
at Shiloh, where it had stood since the da,ys of Joshua. But 
Shiloh, as we learn from Jeremiah, was utterly destroyed ; just 
when or by whom we are not informed ( Jer. vii. 12-14 ; xxvi. 
6-9). The tabernacle, howeyer, was either saved from the wreck 
or removed before it occurred ; for in the latter part of the redgn 
of Saul we find it at !N^ob, where David obtained the shewbread 
and the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech, the priest (I. Sam. 
xxi. 1-9). !N^ob was in the territory of Benjamin, and close in 
the vicinity of Gibeah, where Saul resided. Ahimelech was a 
son of Ahitub, who was a son of Phinehas and a grandson of 
Eli (xxii, 19; xiv. 3). This shovv^s that descendants of Eli to 
the third generation continued te keep guardianship of the 
tabernacle, and that they followed it from Shiloh to IlTob. 
Doubtless Ahimelech was a better man than his grandfatherr, 
Phinehas ; but the fact that he so readily consented to give the 
holy bread, which none but priests could lawfully eat, to David 
and his servants, shows that the laws regulating the tabernacle 
service were still grossly violated. Shortly after this all the 
priests at K ob were slaughtered by Doeg, with the exception of 
Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, who fled to David in the cave of 
AduUam, and the town of !N'ob was depopulated (I. Sam. 
xxii. 18-23). 

The tabernacle now disappears from the history till the 
latter part of David's reign, when we find it in Gibeon. This 
place was some seven or eight miles northwest of Jerusalem, 
and about the same distance due west of 'Noh. The ark in the 
meantime had remained at Kiriath-jearim. This place was 
nearer to Gibeon than the latter was to Jerusalem ; but though 
the two sacred symbols were now Avithin ^ve or six miles of each 
other, they were not brought together. David, after reigning 
seven years at Hebron, took possession of Jerusalem, strength- 
ened its fortifications and moved the ark into it, placing it in a 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 45 

tent specially constructed for its reception. It would have cost 
him as little labor to have moved it into its old resting-place 
in the tabernacle. He not only avoids this, and puts it into a 
new tent, but he leaves the old structure outside the city on th.e 
hill of Gibeon. He does not, however, totally neglect the old 
structure and its altar ; for he appoints Zadok and other priests 
to minister before it and to offea: burnt offerings on its altar 
^'according to all that is written in the law of Jehovah which 
he commanded Israel.'' At the same time he appointed sixty- 
eight priests, with Obed-Edom at their head, to minister 
before the ark in Jerusalem, "as every day's work required" 
(I. Chron. xvi. 37-42). 

Here now were two altars in use almost in sight odP each 
other, and each was served by a regularly appointed priest- 
hood. A more open disregard of the Deuteronomic law restrict- 
ing sacrifice to a single altar could not exist. If that law was 
in existence at the time, then David, instead of restoring the 
ark to the tabernacle, and requiring all sacrifices to be offered 
there, as the law^ required, deliberately and intentionally set the 
law aside. But as David was constantly attended by prophets, 
such as Xathan and Gad, besides being himself inspired in tlie 
latter part of his reign, he must have been guided in all this 
by inspiration. Indeed, the very fact that the ark had always 
stood in the tabernacle until it was captured by the Philistines, 
would have been a controlling reason for replacing it there, 
had this reason not been overruled by some superior considera- 
tion. What could this superior consideration have been, unless 
it was that God, having formed the purpose of a settled place 
of worship in Jerusalem, chose to gradually bring the tabernacle 
into neglect, so that the transition from it to the temple should 
not be so abrupt as to shock the devotional feelings of the godly 
among the people? David had already conceived the idea of 
building a temple, and the actual construction of it only awaited 
in God's purpose the peaceful reign of Solomon. If Deute- 
ronomy, with its restrictive law, was already in existence, its 
relaxation was justified by the circumstances, and therefore it 



46 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

can furnish no ground for denying tlie existence of that book. 
The argument, then, by which the non-existence of the Book of 
Deuteronomy is inferred from the sacrifices offered on various 
altars during the judgeship of Samuel and the reign of David, 
is a sophism which has plausibility only in the absence of a 
careful consideration of the facts in the case. It is an example 
of historical criticism which misinterprets history. 

After Salomon's temple was consecrated, it must be 
admitted, by all who give credit to the Book of Kings, that 
offerings on any other altar than the one before the temple 
were held to be illegal. In the account of the reign of every 
good king down to that of Hezekiah, it is mentioned as a defect 
of his government that the ''high places'' were not taken away. 
This is said of Asa, of Jehoshaphat, of Jehoash, of Amaziah, 
of Azariah, of Jotham ; but when the authoT comes to Hezekiah, 
the best of the kings down to his day, he says: "He did that 
which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that 
his father David had done. He removed the high places, and 
broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah." The writer has 
two refrains running through his historical song — one through 
the story of the good kings who reigned in Jerusalem, the other 
running through the story of the successors of Jeroboam. In 
the former he sings, "Howbeit the high places were not taken 
away: the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high 
places." In the other, "He departed not from the sins of Jero- 
boam the son of E'ebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin." The 
sins of Jeroboam, thus referred to, were those of setting up an 
altar and image for calf -worship, and of forbidding his subjects 
to go to Jerusalem to worship God. They were sins against 
the single sanctuary to which worship was restricted by the law 
in Deuteronomy. The sin of omission on the part of the com- 
paratively good kings of Judah was that of not removing the 
altars and images which the disobedient people were constantly 
setting up "on every high hill and under every green tree." 
When, in addition, the historian comes to the reign of a king 
of whom he could say, "He removed the high places, and broke 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 47 

doAvn the pillars, and cut down tlio Aslierali/' what stronger as- 
surance could he give that worship at tlft?se places was unlaw- 
ful, and that it had been tolerated only by a dereliction on the 
part of the kings ? It was a case much like that of the liquor 
sailoons in our oAvn country, which are in many places prohib- 
ited by law, but are kept up in spite of law, through tlie 
unfaithfulness of executive officers. The force of this evidence 
is so great that our destructive critics are able to evade it only 
by the device to which they always resort when all othei'S fail 
them — that of denying the statements of the historian. They 
tell us that tJiese expressions of opposition to the high places 
were interpolated by a Deuteronomic writer who wrote back 
into the past the sentiments of his own day, his day being after 
the Book of Deuteronomy had been discovered by Hilkiali. 
They were intended to deceive the people into the belief that 
Deuteronomy was, as it claims to be, a book of Moses. Thus 
must the history go do^vn to make room for the theory. And 
this is ^'scientific" criticism ! 

Let it also be distinctly noted that from the consecration of 
Solomon's temple onward, no good king or priest or prophet 
ever offered sacrifice at any otber altar than the one in front of 
the temple; and that while the majority of the good kings are 
censured for permitting some of the people to sacrifice in the 
high places, the best tw^o of them, Hezekiah and Josiah, broke 
down that practice to tiie best of their ability. So far as Judah 
is concerned, then, the law in Deuteronomy was recognized, 
and this is sufficient proof, in the absence of conflicting evi- 
dence, that Deuteronomy was known and its authority recog- 
nized in that kingdom. 

Let us now turn to the northern kingdom. We learn inci- 
dentally, from Elijah's answer to the Lord at Mt. Horeb, that 
altars had been erected, by the worshipers of Jehovah in Israel. 
He says: "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, 
thro\\Ti down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the 
sw^ord." This w^as spoken during the prevalence of Baal w^or- 
ship under the reign of Ahab. How many of these altars had 
been in use we have no means of knowing ; but the one on whicli 



48 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Elijah called doA\Ti fir© from heaven on Mt. Carmel was one of 
them; for it is said, ^^He repaired the altar of Jehovah that 
was thrown down." It was made of twelve stones, according 
to the twelve tribes of Israel, showing that worshipers of Jeho- 
vah among the ten tribes still recognized the- unity of Israel, 
notwithstanding the division which had taken place. This 
may have been the reason why their altars were cast down. 

We are to answer the question, Does the fact of these altars, 
whether many or few, at which sacrifices were offered by the 
pious people in Israel, prove that these godly people werei nob 
acquainted with the restrictive law in Deuteronomy ? To reach 
an answer, we must remember that Jeroboam, the first king of 
the ten tribes, prohibited his subjects from going to Jerusalem 
to worship and that every succeeding king "departed not from 
the sins of Jeroboam the son of E^ebat, who made Israel to 
sin." What, then, could the godly in Israel do when they 
wished to make atonement for their sins? They must either 
erect altars in their own country, and make the prescribed offer- 
ings there, or live and die without the atonement which was 
necessary to their pciace with God. rortunately for them, their 
forefathers, previous to the bringing in of the Mosaic ritual, 
had erected altars wherever they had pitched their tents, and 
God had aocepted their sacrifices. To this practice, in their 
extremity, they returned. Moreover, when Jeroboiam issued 
his famous and infamous decree, all the priests and Levites in 
his kingdom abandoned their homes and retired into the king- 
dom of Judah, where the true priesthood ofiiciated at the one 
legal altar ; and Jeroboam appointed a new order of priests for 
his calf -worship (11. Chron. xi. 13-16). This compelled the 
people in- Israel who clung to Jehovah, to resort to prophets 
to act as priests, or to present, after patriarchal custom, their 
own offerings.. 

It is not necessary to decide whether, in all this, the pious 
in Israel did right. Whether they did right or ^vrong, these 
considerations amply explain their non-observance of the Deu- 
teronomic law of a single altar; and they show that the argu- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 49 

nient again&t the existence of that law, drawn from this non- 
observance, is a very thin sophism.^ 

§4. Evidence fkom the Alleged Absence of the Aarqnic 

Priesthood. 

It is claimed by the destructive critics that in the Book of 
Deuteronomy no official distinction is made between priests 
and Levites — that all Levites were qualified for priestly func- 
tions. This they hold as proof that Deuteronomy was written 
at a much, later date than the Mosaic book of the covenant (Ex. 
xx.-xxiii.), which makes no provision for any priesthood at all. 
It is also held as proof that Deuteronomy is of earlier date 
than the legislation in Leviticus and Xmnbers, in which there 
is a distinction between the functions of the priests and the 
other members of the tribe of Levi — the natural line of develop- 
ment being from no priesthood at all to one consisting of a 
whole tribe, and then to a select family of that tribe, elevated 
to aristocratic dignity. 

We shall examine these several alleg^ations in the order in 
which they are named, and first that respecting the use of the 
two terms in Deuteironomy. Driver presents th.e common doc- 
trine of his class in these words: 

In the laws of P in Leviticus and Numbers a sharp distinction is 
drawn between the priests and the common Levites; in Deuteronomy 
it is implied (xviii. 1) that all members of the tribe of Levi are 
qualified to exercise priestly functions (Int., 82; Com. on Deut.y 122). 

In his later work, the Commentary, he modifies this state- 
ment by appending these remarks: 

Thus, though there is a difference in Deuteronomy between 
"priest" and "Levite," it is not the difference recognized in P; in P 
the priests constitute a fixed minority of the whole tribe, viz.: the 
descendants of Aaron; in Deuteronomy they are a fluctuating minority , 
viz.: those members of the tribe officiating for the time at the central 
sanctuary. Accordingly, in Deuteronomy the distinctive title of the 
priests is not "sons of Aaron," but "sons of Levi" or "Leviticai 
priests." Naturally the eldest of the families descended directly from 
Aaron, which had the custody of the ark, enjoyed the pre-eminence, 
and this is recognized in x. 6; allied families also, which had secured 



* This view of the subject is admirably presented by Dr. J. Sharpe, 
Lex M., 345 f. 



50 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

a position at the central sanctuary, would doubtless rank above their 
less fortunate brethren; but no exclusive right is recognized in Deute- 
ronomy as belonging to the descendants of Aaron in contradistinction 
to other members of the tribe (219). 

It seems from this that Deuteronomy does make a distinc- 
tion between priests and Levites. It is admitted that the 
expression "priests and Levites" means "the Levitical 
priests." In his comment on xviii. 1, Driver makes this still 
more explicit by defining the expression as "the priests of the 
tribe of Levi, the Levitical priests, the standing designation of 
the priests in Deuteronomy" (213). And yet he makes a 
feeble effort to show that the expression includes the whole 
tribe of Levi. The whole verse under consideration reads: 
"The priests the Levites, even all the tribe of Levi, shall have 
no poTtion nor inheritance with Israel : they shall eat the offer- 
ings of Jehovah made by fire, and his inherit ance^." Driver 
says of the clause, "even all the tribe of Levi," that it is "an 
explanatory apposition to ^the priests the Levites.' Such 
explanatory appositions are frequent in Deuteronomy, and 
denote regularly the entire group of which one or more repre- 
sentative items have been specified in the preceding woTds" 
(213). Let this be true, and it only shows that the entire group 
included in all the tribe of Levi, of which one "representative 
item" has been mentioned in the .previo'us wo^rds, were tO' have 
no portion nor inheritance with Israel. But this, instead of 
showing that the Levitical priests included the whole tribe of 
Levi, only shows that they coinstituted "one representative 
item" of that "entire group." 

There is a fact, strangely overlooked by Driver and his fel- 
low critics, which thoiroughly disproves the assumption that the 
expression "the priests the Levites" means all the tribe^ of 
Levi ; and this is the fact that the author of Chronicles, who, 
as they freely admit, was acquainted with the law which makes 
"a sharp distinction" between priests and Levites, employs the 
same expression three times for the priests alone (II. Chron. 
V. 5; xxiii. 18; xxx. 27). ^ot only so, but the same expres- 
sion is found in Josh. iii. 3, which is ascribed by these critics 
to E, who wrote according to hypothesis before the date of Deu- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 51 

teronomy, and yet it designates the priests only ; for they bor(3 
the ark across the Jordan, and this could not have been done 
by the whole tribe of Levi. The expression in that place is 
translated in the Polychrome Bible, "the Levitical priests." 
Such, then, is the fat© of a criticism which is held by all classes 
of destructive critics as proof of a contradiction between Deu- 
teronomy and the other books of the Pentateuch. 

In the rest of the extract from Driver's Commentary given 
above, there are two points of argument that demand attention, 
and both may be answered together. First, that though a dif- 
ference between priests and Levites is recognized in Deute- 
ronomy, it is not the same difference w^hich is clearly defined 
in P; that is, in Leviticus. Second, that while the descend- 
ants of Aaron had the custody of the ark, and on this account 
enjoyed a pre-eminence, no exclusive nght is recognized as 
belonging to them. This is all answered by the fact that in 
Deuteronomy the distinction between priests and Levites is 
nowhere formally stated, but in the three middle books it is. 
If, then, we grant what the books themselves claim, that these 
middle books which make the distinction were written before 
Moses delivered the addresses in Deuteronomy, it is seen at 
once that there w^as no occasion in Deuteronomy for pointing 
out this distinction, it being perfectly well known to all the 
people. It is only by first assuming that Deuteronomy pre- 
ceded the other books that these critics can find a place for this 
argument; it can not therefore be used as proof of that pre- 
cedence. When a fact can be equally accounted for by either 
of two suppositions, it can not be logically used as a proof 
of either. 

We shall have more to say respecting the alleged differences 
between Deuteronomy and the middle books on this subject of 
the Levites when we come to speak of other alleged contradic- 
tions between them. 

In this connection it may be well to notice the use that has 
been made of Micah's Levite priest as a proof of the priestly 
character of the Levites in the time of the judges. Andrew 
Hai-per states the case very briefly in these words : 



52 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

As we see from the story of Micah in Judges, it was considered 
desirable to have a Levite for priest everywhere, and consequently 
there would arise at all the high places Levitic priesthoods, most prob- 
ably in part hereditary {Com., p. 325). 

When the reason why Micah was gla,d to obtain a Levite 
as his priest is considered, the inference sought to be derived 
from the fact disappears. This reason is uniformly ignored 
by the critics who argue as Harper does. It is this: Micah 
had set up a silver idol in his honse, made of some silver which 
he had stolen from his mother; and, because he could do no 
better, he made one of his sons the priest to serve before it. 
The son was probably a chip from the old block. One day a 
good-for-nothing Levite, who was wandering aboiit like a mod- 
ern tramp, ^^to sojourn where he could find a place,'' dropped 
in, and Micah, on learning who he was, coffered him five doUars 
a year and one suit of clothes, if he would stay with him and 
be his priest. The trifling fellow accepted the offer, and Micah 
was fool enough to say, ^^IN^ow I know the Lord will do me good, 
seeing that I have a Levite for my priest." He was lifted up 
by the exchange, very much as a modern saloon-keeper would 
be if he could get a deacon for his bartender. But what proof 
does this afford that all Levites in those days exercised priestly 
functions ? It was not long before this tramp Levite, for the 
sake of better wages, combined with some rascally Danites to 
steal Micah's image and carry it off to a city which the Danites 
were about to steal, and to set up a house of worship there. 
Served Micah about right (Judg. xvii., xviii.). 

Driver agrees with Harper in thinking that many of the 
priests of the high places were Levites ; and the reckless conduct 
of Micah's Levite makes this highly probable. In times of 
demoralization the people always neglect their duty toward the 
ministers of religion, and the latter are apt to become demor- 
alized with them, and, for the sake of money or notoriety, to be 
ready for anything that turns up. But Driver makes a singular 
use of this fact in the following passage in his Commentdry: 

The aim of Deuteronomy is to limit the exclusiveness of the Jeru- 
salem priests: it provides that a country Levite, coming to officiate at 
the central sanctuary, is to share in the dues received there equally 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 53 

with the priests resident on the spot. How far this provision was 
acted on by the Jerusalem priests, we do not know; II. Kings xxiii 
9 shows that, at least after the abolition of the high places by Josiah, 
the disestablished priests (who are yet styled "the brethren of those 
at Jerusalem"), though they were allowed the maintenance due to 
them as priests by the law of Deut. xviii. 8, were not admitted to the 
exercise of priestly functions at the temple (220). 

This is true, but whea-e did Josiah get the idea of thus deal- 
ing with these priests, and what authority could he claim for 
refusing them, when they returned to their proper places, the 
privileges of their office ? This question the critics do not pre- 
tend to answer, although an answer is close at hand if they 
were willing to use it, and it can scarcely have escaped the 
notice of them all. This exclusion is explicitly provided for 
in the Book of Leviticus in the cases of members of the priestly 
family who were marred by physical blemishes. They were 
to eat of the holy meats, but were not to officiate at the altar 
(Lev. xxi. 16-24). Here was an analogous case to guide the 
judgment of the king, and the fact that he followed it to the 
letter indicates the strong probability that he had it before 
him, and that therefore the critical theory which makes Deu- 
teronomy precede the other law-books is erroneous. 

We have already mentioned, in the beginning of this sec- 
tion, the claim that the first legislation made no provision for 
a priesthood. We now wish to speak of it more particularly. 
Eobertson Smith sets forth the claim in the terms that follow : 

The first legislation had no law of priesthood, no provision as to 
priestly dues. The permission of many altars, which it presupposes, 
is given in Ex. xx. 24-26, in a form that assumes the right of laymen 
to offer sacrifice, as we actually find them doing in so many parts of the 
history. Yet a closer observation shows that the old law presupposes 
a priesthood, whose business lies less with sacrifice than with the 
divine Torah which they administer in the sanctuary as the succes- 
sors of Moses (0. T., 359). 

The "first legislation" here mentioned is that of Ex. xx. 
23. But when this legislation was given, a priesthood was 
already in existence; for when God. commanded Moses to come 
up into the mount where he gave that legislation, he said to 
Moses: "Let the priests also, who come near to Jehovah, 
sanctify themselves, lest Jehovah break forth upon them.'*' 



54 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

And again: "Let not the priests and the people break 
through to come unto Jehovah, lest he break forth upon them" 
(Ex. xix. 22, 24). These were "undoinbtedlj men who had been 
recognized as priests before this first legislation was given; 
that is, the priests of the patriarchal dispensation. On the 
same historical authority we affirm that during the forty days^ 
sojoiurn in the mount by Mouses, which followed immediately 
upon this legislation, God selected the family of Aaron to be 
his priests, thus estahlishing a new ordcT of priesthood ; for we 
read (xxviii. 1) that God said to Moses: "Bring thou near 
unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from 
among the childre/n of Israel, that he may minister unto me in 
the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and 
Ithamar, Aaron's sons." Then follows, in the same chapter, 
a description of the priestly garments which they were to wear, 
and in the next chapter the law of their consecration; and in 
the fortieth chapter, the tabernacle and its furniture having 
been then completed, we have a description of their consecra- 
tion. ISTow, all this history has to be cast aside as absolutely 
false before it can be fairly asserted that the first legislation 
provided for no priesthood, that every man was left to offer his 
own sacrifice, or that all the descendants of Levi were quali- 
fied for priestly functions. And this criticism, which de&troys 
the history that we have, and substitutes something purely 
imaginary in its place, is styled historical and scientific!^ 

§5. Evidence from Alleged Contradictions. 

It is constantly alleged by the advocates of the late date of 
Deuteronomy that there are contradictions between it and the 
three middle books of the Pentateuch which are inconsistent 
with the supposition that all came from the same writer, and 
which demand both a later author than Moses for Deut^ron- 



'For the arguments on this topic expressed by other authors, see 
Robertson Smith, Prophets, 38, 101; Addis, D. of H., xlv., Ixxxiv. to 
Ixxxvii.; A. Harper, Com., 21-25, 310-313; Bartlett, Veracity of Hex., 
chap, xix.; F. E. Spencer, Lex M., 550; Bissell, O. and S. of Pent., 
112-122. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 55 

omy, and a still later date for tlio otlier books. A portion of 

the evidence from this source has been considered already in 

Section 3, and now we take up the rest. 

1. Contradictions as to the Financial Condition of the 

Levites. This contradiction is compactly stated by Driver in 

these words : 

Deut. xviii. 6 is inconsistent with the institution of Levitical 
cities prescribed in Num. xxxv. It implies that the Levite has no 
settled residence, but is a "sojourner" in one or other of the cities 
("gates") of Israel. The terms of the verse are indeed entirely com- 
patible with the institution of Levitical cities, supposing it to have 
been imperfectly put in force; but they fall strangely from one who, 
ex hypothese, had only six months previously assigned to the Levites 
permanent dwelling-places. The same representation recurs in other 
parts of Deuteronomy: the Levites are frequently alluded to as scat- 
tered about the land, and are earnestly commended to the Israelites' 
charity — Chaps, xii. 12; xviii. 19; xiv. 27, 29; xvi. 11, 14; xxvi. Il- 
ls {Int., 83). 

Andrew Harper's presentation of the case is quite similar : 

The same conclusions present themselves if we look more closely 
into the curious fact that Deuteronomy always speaks of the Levites 
as poor. . . . But this poverty is not consistent with their whole posi- 
tion as sketched in the Levitical legislation. There we have the 
Levites launched as a regularly organized priestly corporation, 
endowed with ample revenues, and ruled and represented by a high 
priest of the family of Aaron, clothed with powers almost royal, sur- 
rounded by a priestly nobility of his own family, and by a bodyguard 
of his tribesmen entirely at his disposal. Such a body never has 
remained chronically and notoriously poor {Com. on Deut., 25, 26). 

In these last remarks, Mr. Harper must have had in mind 
the established clergy of England, whose revenues are collected, 
like those of the civil government, by compulsion ; and yet, even 
the English clergy of the lower orders remain ^^chronically and 
notoriously poor." Only the bishops and higher orders of 
clergy are "chronically and notoriously" rich. But the finan- 
cial condition of the Levites, as provided for in the "Levitical 
legislation," is very imperfectly understood by both of these 
scholars. True, according to the law respecting Levitical cit- 
ies, every family of the tribe was to be provided with a home in 
such a city, but it is notorious that a house to live in brings 
a man no income for the support of his family. True, a strip 
of pasture land a thousand yards in width was to be left around 
every city ; but this would barely support the goats which were 



5G 2.UB AUTHORSHIP OF 

needed for milk, and could bring no income. Tme, also, that 
a tithe of the increase from the fields and the flocks and herds 
of the other triLes, was to be given to the Le\dtes ; and this 
would have been an ample provision for their support if, as in 
England, an armed and ample police force had been provided 
for its prompt coUeetion and delivery ; but there was no provi- 
sion for the forcible collection of the tithe, and therefore this 
was left to the good will of the people at large. The support 
of the Levites was analogous, not to that of the clergy of an 
established church in modern times, but to that of the dissent- 
ing clergy in Grreat Britain and the Protestant ministry in 
America. It is a well-known fact that this ministry is, with 
rare exceptions, ^^chronically and notoriously poor.'' The 
income for its support is meager, and it varies with what the 
people call "good times" and "hard times." When "hard 
times" set in, one of the first moves in economy is a reduction 
in the income of preachers. As a result, thousands of them 
are often compelled to resort to secular labor for the means of 
livelihood. The same is true when waves of immorality sweep 
over the land, or seasons of lethargy benumb the souls of relig- 
ious people. 

On account of these considerations, the legislation for the 
support of the Levites, instead of securing them against want, 
was a deliberate consignment of the whole tribe to such a 
dependence on the liberality of the other tribes as to insure to 
them frequent periods of great destitution. Professor Driver, 
as quoted above, sho\vs that he recognizes this fact, when he 
says that the terms in which the Levite is spoken of in Deute- 
ronomy are "entirely compatible with the institution of Leviti- 
cal cities, supposing it to have been imperfectly put in force." 
But what provision of the kind, in the history of any nation, 
ever was perfectly put in force when none but moral force was 
to be applied ? If all these provisions were made by Moses in 
the wilderness, as they claim to have been, every thought- 
ful Levite must have seen in advance, if he judged 
the future faithfulness of the other tribes by what he 



THE BOOK OB' DEUTERONOMY. 57 

Lad knowTi of it in the past, that his tribe was 
doome^l to such imceirtainty of support as would in- 
sure frequent periods of destitution. And Moses, above all 
others, must have foreseen this contingency. Yet Professor 
Driver says that his remarks about the future poverty of the 
Levites, and especially what he says of the Levite being at times 
a sojourner in some city of the other tribes, ^^falls strangely 
from one who, ex liypotJiese, had only six months previously 
assigned to the Levites permanent dwelling-places." It w^ould 
have sounded much more strange if a man of the experience 
and foresight possessed by Moses, had spoken- confidently of the 
future prosperity of the Levites under the working of such a 
system as he provided. 

This view of the subject is confirmed by the facts of his- 
tory. For if we concede that Moses gave the Levitical legisla- 
tion, and that the historical books of the Old Testament give 
real historj^, we find the experiences of the Levites to have act- 
ually been what sound judgment should have anticipated in 
advance. The Levite who officiated as a priest before Micah's 
silver image lived in a time of lawlessness, when "there was no 
king in Israel;" and this fully accounts for his wandering 
and poverty. 

When Xehemiah made his second visit to Jerusalem he 
says : "I perceived that the portion of the Levites had not been 
given them, so that the Levites and the singers that did the 
work were fled every one to his field." This neglect followed 
close upon a solemn covenant of the people made after hearing 
read the law of ^Moses, in which the faithful payment of the 
tithes was one of the neglected duties to which they pledged 
themselves (X(eh. xiii. 10; x. 37-39, 28, 29). If such neglect 
of the Levites, compelling them to resort to the fields for a live- 
lihood, occurred during the ministry of ^ehemiah, how much 
more certainly must it have occurred during the idolatrous 
reigns of such kings as Ahaz, Manasseh and Anion, tosayjiotn- 
ing of Ahaziah and Athaliah. 

Finally, it is only by denying the tiiith of histoiy for the 
sake of a theory, that the testimony of Chronicles with refer- 



58 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

ence to the Levitical cities in the days of Jeroboam can be set 
aside. It is declared by the author of this book that when 
Jeroboam set up his idolatrous worship at Bethel, and forbade 
his subjects to go to Jerusalem to worship God, the Levites in 
all Israel resorted to Rehoboam. ^'They left their suburbs and 
their possessions, and came to Judah and Jerusalem" (II. 
Chron. xi. 13, 14). We thus see that when, in Deuteronomy, 
the Levites were spoken of as if they would be a poor tribe, 
needing the religious benevolence of their brethren, this is not 
contradictory to the appointment of certain cities for them to 
dwell in, but was an unavoidable consequence of the very means 
of support which is provided in the Levitical legislation. Its 
bearing as evidence is against the "critics." 

It is notoriously easy, in the ardor of debate, to overstate 
the facts in a case. This has been done by both of the writers 
quoted above in reference to the poverty of the Levites. We 
are told by Professor Driver that in Deuteronomy "the Levites 
are frequently spoken of as scattered about the land, and are 
earnestly commended to the Israelites' charity;" and by Mr. 
Harper, that "Deuteronomy always speaks of the Levite as 
poor." We have thus far argued as if these statements were 
correct; we now propose to state the case as it is. The name 
"Levite," in the singular or the plural number, occurs nine- 
teen times in Deuteronomy. Twice they are mentioned as 
guardians of the book of the law (xvii. 18) ; omce in connection 
with the curses to be pronounced at Mount Ebal (xxvii. 14) ; 
once as speaking with Moses certain commands of God (xxvii. 
9) ; once in their capacity as teachers (xxiv. 8) ; once as consti- 
tuting a part of the court of final appeals (xvii. 9) ; four times 
in connection with the common rejoicings before Jehovah on 
festal occasions (xii. 18 ; xvi. 11, 14; xxvi. 11) ; twice when the 
people are directed to give the tithes to them (xxvi. 12, 13) ; 
three times with reference to their being without landed inher- 
itance (xii. 12; xiv. 29 ; xviii. 1) ; twice in exhortations to the 
people not to forsake them (xii. 19 ; xiv. 27) ; and twice in the 
directions concerning a homeless Leivite who may come to the 
central sanctuary to serve among his brethren. 



fH^ BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 5d 

Strictly speaking, in only five of tliese passages is the pov- 
erty of the Levites spoken of at all, and in only two are the 
people of the other tribes exhorted not to forsake them. This 
falls very far short of what one would suspect from the strong 
language of Driver and Harper; and if, as we have argued 
before, the whole of the legislation contained in Leviticus and 
Numbers had been already enacted, tbis was no worse than a 
fair amount of good sense on the part of Moses, without the 
aid of inspiration, would have enabled him to anticipate. 

Much has been said in this connection about the supposed 
case of a Levite mentioned in Deut. xviii. 6-8. The text says : 

And if a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel, 
where he sojourneth, and come with all the desire of his soul unto 
the place which Jehovah shall choose; then he shall minister in the 
name of Jehovah his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which 
stand there before Jehovah, They shall have like portion to eat, 
besides that which cometh of the sale of his patrimony. 

It has been held that tbe condition of this Levite was that 
of all the tribe. But he is clearly distinguished from the rest 
by the fact implied in the last clause, that he had sold his patri- 
mony. His condition is explained and accounted for by the 
law in reference to Levitical cities, and it can be explained in 
no other w^ay. According to the statute governing the sale and 
redemption of real estate, if the house of a. Levite was sold, 
he could redeem it at any time; and if it was redeemed by 
another Levite, it went out of the latter^s possession and into 
that of the original owner in the jubile (Lev. xxv. 32, 33). 
The Levite' s patrimony was his dwelling-house in the Levitical 
city, which he had received by inheritance from his forefathers 
back to the beginning. This he might sell; and if he should 
not be able to redeem it, he was deprived of it till the next 
jubila In the interval, if the proceeds of the sale were not 
sufficient to supply his wants, this law in Deuteronomy gave 
him the privilege of coming to the central sanctuary and par- 
taking with the Levites doing service there of the food pro- 
vided for them. This, together with what he had left from 
the sale of his patrimony, would keep him from suffering. 
This provision, then, instead of being contradictory to the pre- 



60 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

vioois existence of Levitical cities, demands these and the law 
regulating property in them as its explanation. 

I have said that this is the only explanation of the case. 
I am justified in this assertion by the failure of most of the 
critics to suggest any other, and by the absurdity of the expla- 
nations offered by some. The most elaborate attempt at 
explanation which has come under my eye is that offered by 
Driver in the following paragraph: 

Besides Ms selling according to the fathers. The words are very 
obscure: they are usually understood to mean "apart from what he 
has realized by selling the possessions belonging to him in virtue of 
his family descent" (paraphrased in R. V. by "beside that which 
Cometh of the sale of his patrimony") — possessions which, it is sup- 
posed, he would part with at the time of leaving the country for the 
central sanctuary. Dillman (after J. D. Michaelis, Schultz) explains, 
"Beside what he has realized by selling the dues (tithe, etc.) rendered 
to him at his home by particular families." Either explanation is 
questionable: all that can be said is that the words describe some 
private source of income possessed by the Levite, distinct from what 
he receives as a priest officiating at the central sanctuary {Com., 217 f.). 

When scholarly men turn away from plain facts supplied 
in the text itself, which perfectly explain and account for a 
provision of the law, and resort to conjecture® so unfounded 
and so conflicting, it is a sure sign that their minds have been 
warped by a theory which is untenable, but which they think 
themselves bound to uphold. 

In regard to the law respecting Levitical cities, Addis, fol- 
lowing Wellhausen, takes extreme ground, and his remarks on 
the subject will lead us to another view of the arguments which 
we have just considered. He says : 

There is no reason to think that the "priestly" niles on the 
income of the priests and Levites existed before the exile. Ezekiel 
is silent about the offering of tithes and the firstborn of beasts to 
the priests and Levites. Plainly he had never before heard of priestly 
and Levitical cities. For he makes a provision in lands for the 
priests and Levites, without alluding to any previous arrangement. 
Ezekiel's plan is clear and practicable; the Levitical cities, on the 
contrary, were never, and never could have been, more than a theo- 
cratic dream. In such a country as Palestine, which consists mostly 
of hills pressed together and separated by narrow ravines, no mortal 
power could set apart forty-eight cities surrounded by a pasture land 
of two thousand ells square (D. of H., I. xxxviii.). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 61 

One would think from this last remark, that Mr. Addis 
supposes all of the cities and villages of Palestine to be situated 
in the bottoms or on the edges of deep ravines. He certainly 
has never visited Palestine, or read attentively what has been 
written of it; for even now it has not fo*rty-eight, but nearer 
408 towns, with twice two thousand cubits aroomd them, well 
suited for pasturage. Is he ignorant of the fact that much 
more than half the surface is as smooth and level as a Western 
prairie ? Again, if the Levitical cities "never were, and never 
could have been, more than a theocratic dream," how could 
the writers of Joshua and [lumbers have been believed when 
they wrote about them ?- And as to Ezekiel, if his silence 
about them shows that he knew nothing of them, why does 
not his silence aboTit the offering of tithes and the firstborn of 
beasts, which are mentioned in Deuteronomy, prove that he 
knew nothing about them? It is acknowledged that Deoite- 
ronomy was EzekieFs law-book; and if he is silent about laws 
contained in it, why may he not have been equally silent in 
regard to other laws, and especially about Levitical cities 
which had confessedly ceased to be such when Ezekiel wrote ? 
All these assertions are boldly uttered by Mr. Addis, but in 
uttering them he is whistling against the wind. 

The facts in the case suggest still another consideration, 
which we will mention before we dismiss this argument. If 
it is incredible, or inconsistent with Deruteronomy, that 
Levitical cities existed before the exile, what about the possi- 
bility of their existence, as described in lumbers and Joshua, 
after the exile? After the exile, and previous to the close of 
the Old Testament history, the Jews occupied scarcely more 
than the territory once belonging to Judah, and this very 
sparsely. How, at that period, could the supposititious writer 
of the Book of [N'umbers palm off upon the people a law which 
required forty-eight Levitical cities, and how could the writer 
of Joshua name these cities and give their locations in the 
various tribes, when everybody knew that both the law and the 
pretended comi>liance with it had no existence? And again, 
what motive could have actuated the two falsehoods, and how 



62 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

could their author have acquired the ingenuity in lying neces- 
sary to their invention? He was a greater genius than the 
author of "Uto'pia/' with less conscience than the author of 
"Sindbad the Sailor." When men make such characters out 
of the writers of the Bible, and ask us to accept them, 
we decline. 

Before we finally dismiss this subject, we invite attention 
to another statement in Deuteronomy which can be accounted 
for only on the supposition that the Levitical legislation pre- 
ceded that in Deuteronomy. It is found in the following 
words, addressed by Moses to the Israelites with reference to 
the transactions at Mount Sinai : "At that time Jehovah sepa- 
rated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of 
Jehovah, to stand before Jehovah to minister unto him, to 
bless in his name, unto this day. Wherefore Levi hath no 
portion nor inheritance with his brethren : Jehovah is his 
inheritance, according as Jehovah thy God spake to him" 
(X. 8, 9). 

This last clause, "according as Jehovah thy God spake to 
him," can not refer to anything said in Deuteronomy ; for this 
is the first mention of the subject in this book. It must, then, 
refer to something said previously. If Moses spoke the words, 
it must refer to what is written in ^N'um. xviii. 21-24, where 
the statute referred to is recorded; and it proves that the 
transaction in N^umbers preceded those in Deuteronomy. It 
proves particularly that the Levitical legislation, instead of 
being enacted one thousand years after Moses, as our critics 
allege, was enacted by Moses himself. The only attempt that 
I have seen to evade tlie force of this argTimeut is made by 
Andrew Harper, who, in explaining the words, "as he hath 
spoken to them," says: "The only place in Scripture in which 
such a promise is given is !N'um. xviii. 20-24; so that these 
passages, if not referred to by the author of Deuteronomy, 
must be founded on a tradition already old in his time" 
{Com., 314). If we accept this as the alternative, it follows 
either that the Book of ^N^umbers was written before Deute- 
ronomy, which refutes the critical theory, or at least that this 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 63 

part of the Levitical legislation was already in eixistence. But 
this is not the whole story. The supposed writer of Deute- 
ronomy put these words in the mouth of Moses, and by doing 
so he testifies that the Levitical legislation preceded the date 
at which Moses spoke. He fails, then, to serve the purpose 
of those who invented him, and they may as well set him aside 
as a useless device. 

2. Contradiction as to Tithes. All the destructive critics 
unite in claiming that there is such a contradiction between 
Deuteronomy and Numbers in regard to titlies as to prove 
that the two books were written by different authors and far 
apart in point of tima 

Professor Driver, after setting forth the law of tithes as 

he finds it in Deuteronomy, states the position of his class of 

critics in these words; 

The Deuteronomic law of tithes is, however, in serious, and 
indeed irreconcilable, conflict with the law of P on the same subject 
(Com. Deut., 169). 

By "the law of P" he means the law formally prescribed 

in N'um. xviii. 21-32, and alluded to in Lev. xxvii. 30-33. 

Whether this proposition can be maintained or not, is to be 

determined by a careful consideration of the provisions in the 

two laws. We shall first follow Driver in his representation 

of the law in Deuteronomy. He begins his exposition by 

stating the general law in these terms: 

Israel is to show its devotion to Jehovah by rendering him a tithe 
of all the produce of the soil, to be eaten by the offerer, with his 
household, at the central sanctuary, at a sacred feast, to which the 
Levite is to be invited as a guest: those resident at a distance may 
take with them the value of the tithe in money, and expend it at the 
sanctuary in such food as they desire, to be consumed similarly at a 
sacred feast. Every third year, however, the tithe is not to be con- 
sumed at the central sanctuary, but to be stored up in the Israelite's 
native place, as a charitable fund for the relief of the landless and 
the destitute. 

This representation is near enough to the truth to plausibly 
represent the text, and far enough from it to establish the 
appearance of a contradiction. The text certainly does say: 
"Thou shalt surely tithe all the increase of thy seed, that which 
Cometh forth of the field year by year. And thou shalt eat 



64 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

before Jehovah thy God, in the place which he shall choose to 
cause his name to dwell there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy 
wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herd and thy 
flock ; that thou mayest learn to fear Jehovah thy God always" 
(Deut. xiv. 22, 23). But it does not say, as Professor Dri- 
ver's statement implies, that they were to eat all of the tithe of 
these various articles. It is not guilty of this absurdity. That 
it is an absurdity is evident the very moment w© consider what 
the amount of the tithe would be. If the man's little farm 
yielded barely enough to feed his family, this interpretation of 
the law w^ould require^ him to eat up at ooie feast what would 
keep his family for five weeks. Or, to put the case in 
another form, if his farm yielded annually 100 bushels of 
wheat, 100 gallons of wine and 100 gallons of oil, and if his 
firstlings should be only one laxab, one kid and one calf, he 
would be required at this ^^sacred feast" to eat up ten bushels 
of wheat, ten gallons of wine, ten gallons of oil, a lamb, a kid 
and a calf. Big feasting for a poor man! And then, if he 
were a rich man, with a larger body of land, he might have to 
eat at one feast 100 bushels of w^heat, 100 gallons of wine, 100 
gallons of oil, ten lambs., ten kids and ten calves. 

iNow, the only way to relieve the law of this absurdity Is 
to suppose that it provided only for a single meal out of the 
tithe before it was left for the Lord, that is, for the support 
of the Lord's ministry — the priests and Levites. If this law 
in Deuteronomy was the beginning of legislation on the sub- 
ject, we admit that there wxDuld be no room for this interpre- 
tation of it, seeing that it makes no provision for the priests 
and Levites beyond the single feast. But if, as the Book of 
IN'umbers represents, the law that a tithe of all products of the 
soil cultivated by eleven tribes was to be given annually for 
the support of the tribe of Levi, this Deuteronomic law would 
have been readily understood when given, and would be as 
readily understood now, as simply providing that, when the 
farmer came up annually with his tithe and his firstlings, he 
should unite with the beneficiaries of it in a feast on part- of 
it ere he left the remainder to its appointed purpose. It was 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 65 

a very wise i^rovision ; because it had tlie tendency to make the 
giver part from his gift more cheerfully. 

There is still another reason, and a very imperative one, 
for thus understanding the law. If the whole tithe were to 
be eaten at one feast, the Levdte would certainly be well stu-ffed 
at the time, but what provision would this be for the rest of 
the year ? He would have nothing to eat except when he could 
find some farmer coming up with his tithe, and there would be 
intervals of feasting and longer ones of fasting throughout 
the year — a mode of living not conducive to good health or 
long life. 

Our professor and his company are equally wide of the 
mark in reference to the tithe of the third year. The law 
says: "At the end of every three years thou shalt bring forth 
all the tithe of thine increase in the same year, and shalt lay it 
up within thy gates: and the Levite, because he hath no por- 
tion nor inheritance with thee, and the stranger, and the father- 
less, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, 
and shall eat and be satisfied ; that Jehovah thy God may bless 
thee in all the work of thy hands which thou doest'' (28, 29). 
In this instance, as in the other, it would be impossible to 
eat all the tithe at one feast; and if it were thus eaten, the 
Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow would alter- 
nate between enormous feasts and excruciating fasts. The 
meaning evidently is that out of the supply laid up and kept 
on hand the Levites were to be provided for, and the poor were 
to be kept from suffering. But here, ae:ain, the law in ^N'umbers 
is presupposed. It had already provided for the support of 
the Levites out of the tithe, and this law simply adds the pro- 
vision that the poor of the cities in which the tithe was stored 
should also be fed from it. 

We are now to see in what way Professor Driver makes 
out his case of an irreconcilable conflict bet.ween this law 
of Deuteronomy and the law in Leviticus and [N'umbers. 
He says: 

In Num. xviii. 21-28 the tithe is appropriated entirely to the main- 
tenance of the priestly tribe, being paid in the first instance to the 



66 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Levites, who in their turn pay a tenth of what they receive to the 
priests; in Deuteronomy it is spent partly at sacred feasts (partaken 
in by the offerer and his household), partly in the relief of the poor 
— in both cases the Levite (by which in Deuteronomy are meant the 
members of the tribe generally, including priests) sharing only in 
company with others, as the recipient of the Israelite's benevolence 
(p. 169). 

This is all substantially true, but where is tho irreconcila- 
ble conflict ? If God through Moses gave the first law, why 
should he be charged with contradicting himself by afterward 
providing that the contributor of the tithe might enjoy one 
feast on it in company with the Levites, and that while it was 
kept in store for the Levites, any suffering poor in the store 
city should be relieved from it? If this later provision had 
been made after the first had gone into operation, the Levites 
would have been deprived of a small part of that which had 
previously been their own ; but if we accept the Scriptures for 
it, both laws were given before either went into effect. It is 
like the provisions of a man's will in which by an early clause 
he bequeaths certain property to one of his children, and in a 
later clause directs that this child shall give an annual feast to 
his brothers and sisters, and keep from suffering any of them 
who might become very poor. Who, in this case, would proclaim 
that the two clauses of the will are in irreconcilable conflict, 
and that therefore both could not have been written by the 
same testator? Certainly no sane man, unless he was so 
determined to make a point against the will as to lose for the 
moment his sanity. 

The second point of irreconcilability is stated by Driver in 

these words : 

Further, in Deuteronomy the tithe is exacted only on the vege- 
table produce; in Num. xviii., though it is not exactly so stated, 
the impression produced by the terms employed (note the similes in 
verses 27-30) is that here also only a vegetable tithe is intended. 
If, however. Lev. xvii. 32 f. be rightly regarded as an original part 
of the legislation of P, so that it may be legitimately used in the inter- 
pretation of Num. xviii., the tithe levied on the annual increase of 
cattle will be included as well. But, in either case, a large proportion 
of what in Numbers is devoted exclusively to the support of the 
priestly tribe, remains in Deuteronomy the property of the lay 
Israelite (169, 170). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 67 

How could the learned author designate as '^a large pro- 
portion'' that which was only a single meal eaten out of the 
tenth of all of the fanner's increase for a year ? And how 
could he say that a large proportion ''remains the property of 
the lay Israelite," when none of it remained with him except 
what he carried away in his stomach ? Such exaggerated state- 
ments are not made by thoughtful men except when they are 
hard pressed in making out a case. 

There is a custom in modern times, though not known in 
the established churches of the Old World, which illustrates 
the sacred feasts of Deutei'onomy. The members of a congre- 
gation often gather at the house of the minister, bringing with 
them various articles of food to supply his storeroom for 
months to come ; yet the whole company remains to have a feast 
with the family out of what has been brought. The feast adds 
a charm to the occasion, and increases the good will of both 
the givers and the receiver. Such was the evident inteaition 
of the feast given on the occasion of delivering the tithe to 
the Levites. 

3. As to the Priest's Portion of the Peace-offerings. ThQ 

law in Deuteronomy is this: "And this shall be the priest's 

due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice, whether 

it be ox or sheep, that they shall give unto the priest the 

shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maV (xviii. 3). Driver 

says: 

This is in direct contradiction to Lev. vii. 32-34 (P), which pre- 
scribes the breast and the right thigh as the priest's due of the peace- 
offerings {Com., 215). 

Should this be granted, what would it prove? Would it 
prove that both laws were not given by Moses? Or would it 
prove that, having given the one in Leviticus nearly forty 
years previously, he now gives this as an addition ? Suppose 
Professor Driver to be a priest, and there comes a man with 
a fat ox to make a peace-offering. He offers Driver the 
shoulder, the two cheeks, and the ma,w. Driver answers, "Xo, 
sir; the law gives me the breast and the right thigh. I will 
not accept the shoulder in place of the thigh, nor the cheeks 



68 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

and maw in place of the breast." What would the oifiterer 
say ? According to Driver the critic, he would say, ^There is 
another law contradictory to this, which says you must be con- 
tent with the shoulder, the cheeks and the maw, and this being 
the later law, it abolishes the former." I think that Driver 
the priest would see a point that Driver the critic overlooks. 
He would reply, '^'No, sir ; the two laws do not contradict each 
other. One gives me the breast and the right thigh ; the other 
gives me the right shoulder, the cheeks and the maw; and I 
will have all that both laws give me." The priest, looking at 
his own interest, would not fail to be a better interpreter than 
the critic, whose chief interest is to find contradictions. He 
would see that the later law, instead of contradicting or repeal- 
ing the former, only added to the poTtion to be given to the 
priest. 'No reason is given for the addition; for it is noz 
the custom of the Lawgiver to assign reasons for all of his 
enactments ; but we can easily discover one arising out of 
changing conditions. During the forty years in the wilder- 
ness, the priests were few in number, and the flocks and herds 
of the people were few also; but after crossing the Jordan, 
which was soon to take place, this would be reversed — the 
priests would become a numerous family, the people would 
be in possession of abundance of cattle taken as spoil from, the 
Canaanites, and a more liberal provision for the priests was 
but just. Even at the time when Moses was delivering this 
law, the latter part of the change had set in by means of the 
immense herds of animals recently taken as spoil from the 
Midianites (^N'um. xxxi. 25-47). Had the critics taken a com- 
mon-sense vie^v of the subject, and taken into consideratioia 
the attending circumstances, they would never have conceived 
this argument against the Mosaic origin of the law. 

4. The Sacrifices of the Passover. This alleged discriep- 
ancy is thus presented by Driver: 

Deut. xvi. 2: "Thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy 
God, (even) sheep and oxen." In P (Ex. xii. 3-6) the paschal sacrifice 
Is a lamb. The two laws, it is evident, represent the usage of two 
different stages in the history of the feast; when Deuteronomy was 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 69 

written, the victim might be either a bullock or a sheep; when P was 
written, the choice was limited to a lamb (Com., 191). 

This is another instance of begging the question. Only 
by assuming that the laws in Deaiteronomy preceded those in 
Exodus and Leviticus, and then ignoring a large part of the 
latter, can this chai-g-© of contradiction be made plausible. 
Fuilly and fairly stated, the latter provides, first, that the 
victim consumed, on the first night of the passover week must 
be a lamb of the first year (Ex. xii. 1-8) ; and, second, that 
after this they should "offer an offering made by fire unto 
Jehovah seven days" (Lev. xxiii. 8). Whether the victims 
of these "offerings made by fire," which means burnt offerings, 
were to be of the flock or the herd is not specified. Now, if 
we let this law stand where God placed it, as part of the legis- 
lation given at Mt Sinai, we shall find no difficulty in under- 
standing the later provision in Deuteronomy, and not a shadow 
of contradiction will appear. Moses will then be understood 
in the latter passage as meaning by sacrifice of sheep and oxen 
the burnt offerings which followed the eating of the paschal 
lamb, and by the word "passover," not the paschal supper, but 
the sacrificial service of the seven days. So any Jew in the 
audience who heard Moses would instinctively and necessarily 
understand him; and so would any modern reader who had 
read the previous law and remembered it. Even Kuenen so un- 
derstands it (ii. 30). Thus another alleged discrepancy van- 
ishes, and that which Avas to prove that Moses did not write 
Deuteronomy is no mean proof that he did. 

5. Eating that which Dies of Itself, or is Torn by a Beast. 
The statutes on this subject, taken in the order which they 
have in the Scriptures, are these : 

"And ye shall be holy men unto me; therefore ye shall 
not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall 
cast it to the dogs" (Ex. xxii. 31). This is the first mention 
of the subject., and the only specification is flesh torn by a 
beast. The persons prohibited from eating it are the Jews. 

"And every soul that eateth that which dieth of itself, or 
that which is torn of beasts, whether he be homebom or a 



70 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

stranger, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, 
and be unclean until the even : tben shall he be clean. But if 
he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh, then shall he bear his 
iniquity'' (Lev. xvii. 15, 16). Here the specification of flesh 
that dieth of itself is added, and the penalty of eating it is prer 
scribed. It simply made the person unclean with that par- 
ticular kind of uncleanness which was removed the same day 
by washing the clothes and bathing the flesh. Clearly this is 
an addition to the original law, not a contradiction of it 

"Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou 
mayest give it to the stranger that is within thy gates, that 
he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it to a foreigner: for thou 
art a holy people in Jehovah thy God'' (Deut. xiv. 21). 

Taking the three statutes together, the matter stands thus: 
The Hebrew is forbidden in all three to eat of the flesh referred 
to. He is told to throw it to the dogs or he may give it or sell 
it to strangers. The reason for the prohibition is, not that 
the flesh was unhealthy, but that eating it, like eating any of 
the unclean animals mentioned in the preceding verses of the 
passage in Deuteronomy, made the person legally unclean. 
The "stranger" or the "foreigner" is not in either passage for- 
bidden tO' eat it; but if he does, he, like the Jew, must batihe 
his flesh and wash his clothea [ . , , , ' 

An unsophisticated mind would not dream of a conflict 
between any of the provisions of this law, but not so with our 
critics. Professor Driver, who fairly though very briefly rep- 
resents them all, says of the passage in Deuteronomy : 

It is in conflict with the law of Leviticus; for in Deuteronomy 
what is prohibited to the Israelite is allowed to be given to the 
"stranger" or "foreigner" resident in Israel, whereas in Leviticus it 
is forbidden to both alike (except under the condition of a subse- 
quent purification). The Israelite and the stranger are thus placed 
on different footings in Deuteronomy; they are placed on the same 
footing in Leviticus (Com., 165). 

The conflict here so positively asserted does not exist. 
The reader can see, by a glance at the passage quoted above 
from Leviticus, that the eating in question is not "forbidden 
to both alike," neither is it formally forbidden to either. It 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 71 

is simply ordered that if either eat the flesh that dieth of 
itself, or is torn by beasts, he shall wash his clothes and bathe 
himself in water. The two are treated alike only in that 
which follows the eating, not in the prohibition of the latteT. 
And in Deuteronomy there is nothing to relieve from this 
washing and bathing the stranger to w4iom the flesh may be 
given by a Jew. It was not required of strangers and for- 
eigners that they should be ^'holy unto Jehovah/' and conse- 
quently some things forbidden the Jews, in order to their 
ceremonial holiness, were permitted to the foreigner who might 
reside among them. The Jew w^as forbidden to eat the flesh 
of any quadruped that did not chew^ the cud and part the hoof ; 
but the stranger might freely eat of any forbidden flesh, and 
the Jew might sell it to him if he had it for sale. 

This privilege of selling to strangers flesh that died of 
itself has been criticised on moral grounds. It has been com- 
pared to the act of offering such flesh in our markets — a prac- 
tice forbidden by law. But it is not implied in the law of 
Moses that the seller of such flesh, might lie to his foreign cus- 
tomer by telling him that the animal had been slaughtered 
in the usual way; it is clearly implied that it was to be sold 
for what it was. The fact that the heathen had no scruples 
about eating such flesh, as many heathen have none at the 
present day, removes Irom the transaction the thought of 
deception and the temptation to it. 

6. As to Hebrew^ Bondservants. Our destructive critics 
affect to find several contradictions in the laws regulating the 
bondage to which Hebrew men and women w^ere liable. In 
both Exodus and Deuteronomy it is provided that a Heibrew 
sold to one of his brethren shall serve him only six years; but 
if, at the end of that time, he prefers to remain in bondage, 
the master shall bore a hole in his ear with an aw^l, and he shall 
remain a bondman for life. In Exodus it is provided that tkis 
boring shall be done before the judges (rendered "God" in 
Vv. v.), evidently to guard against fraud; for the judges would 
be disinterested witnesses that the bondman had given his free 
consent. In Deuteronomy Moses omits this provision, and 



72 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

simply says, "Thou shalt take an awl, and thrust it through his 
ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant forever" (xv. 
17). The door would be a firm substance against which to 
press the ear before piercing it, thus lessening the pain and 
preventing laceration. It is on this o<mission in Deuteronomy 
that a charge of contradiction is based. Eobertson Smith 
(ProphetSj 100), Driver and Addis (D. of H., xlviii.), for 
instance, following their German leaders,® claim that because 
the law in Exodus says that the bondservant must be brought 
to God (the judges) for the ceremony of boring, he must be 
brought to a sanctuary. Smith and Driver say to "the sanc- 
tuary," while Addis says to "a local sanctuary." But, inas- 
much as this requirement is omitted in Deuteronomy, it is 
inferred that in the latter we have a different law. Driver 
states the inference thus: 

In Exodus tlie ceremony is a public and oflBcial one; in Deute- 
ronomy it is of a purely domestic character, being transacted entirely 
at the master's own house (Com., 184). 

This inference is very disparaging to the good sense of the 
"Deuteronomist ;" for if he was a man of the least reflection, 
he would see that to give the owner of a bondservant the right 
to bore the ear of the latter as a purely domestic ceremony, 
without the presence and cognizance of disinterested witnesses, 
would place the perpetual bondage of the servant entirely in 
the hands of an unscrupulous owner, and would thus prac- 
tically nullify the law of release at the end of six years. The 
hole in the ear was the mark of perpetual bondage voluntarily 
assumed; and if the boring was done in private, though done 
without the bondman's consent, his subsequent denial that he 
had given his consent would be of no avail against the testi- 
mony of his master and members of his family whom he might 
suborn as witnesses. The Deuteronomist, \vhoever he was, 
was a friend of his people, and especially of the poor; and he 
was incapable of inventing such a law. The inference is 

•They follow Kuenen, who says: "The Hebrew slave who volun- 
tarily entered into servitude for life, had to make his declaration to 
that effect in the sanctuary, in order to add to the solemnity of his 
act— Cap. xxi. 6" (Rel of Israel, II. 83). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 73 

equally disparaging to the piety of the Deuteronomi&t ; for it 
is admitted by the three gentlemen quoted above, and by all 
who style themselves '^evangelical critics," that the law in 
Exodus was actually one of those given by Moses; and it is 
held that the Deuteronomist framed his laws after the model 
of those given by Moses: how, then, could he have deliberately 
deprived the Hebrew bondman of the safeguard prescribed by 
Moses, which protected him from being kept in perpetual 
bondage by an unscrupulous master ? And even if the Deute- 
ronomist was base enough to devise such a law, how can these 
critics account for the fact that it was accepted by the people 
in opposition to the law of Moses ? These questions they have 
not attempted to answer, neither do they seem to have suffi- 
ciently reflected on their scheme to see that they could be pro- 
pounded. The little boy who builds his first cob house seldom 
sees how easily it can be toppled over until some other boy 
tries it ^'Modern scientific critics" ought to have more 
foresight. 

The common-sense view of the omission in Deuteronomy- 
is this: that Moses, having already given, for an obvious 
reason, the requirement that the bondman's free consent must 
be expressed in the presence of the judges, and that in their 
presence the hole should be bored in his ear as further proof 
that consent had been given, in repeating the law left out a 
part which no man who had once heard it, or heard of it, could 
ever forget. It looks like malice to claim here a contradiction 
between the two laws. It is a simple case of omission. The 
idea of going to a sanctuary is invented by these critics. I£ 
going to God, as they themselves testify, means going to the 
judges who execute God's law, then wherever the judges were 
they might go. But the law required that judges b© appointed 
in every city (Deut. xvi. 18-20), and the judges in the master's 
own city would in this case be preferred as the most convenient 
witnesses in case of subsequent dispute. In actual experience 
bondmen were sometimes held unlawfully (Jer. xxxiv. 8-22). 
In passing, we may remark that Driver forgets himself while 



74 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

speaking on. this subject, and styles the ceremony as "nailing 
his eiar to the door of his master^s house'' (184). 

In the second place, it is affirmed that these two laws con- 
tradict each other in reference to the term of service of a 
Hebrew bondwoman. In Exodus it is said, "If a man sell his 
daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go ooit as the men- 
servants do'' (xxi. 7). In Deuteronomy, after the direction 
about boring the ear of the manservant with an awl, it is said, 
"And also unto thy maidservant shalt thou do likewise" 
(xv. 17). 

Driver comments on the apparent conflict as follows: 

No doubt the true explanation of the variation is that the law of 
Deuteronomy springs from a more advanced stage of society than the 
law of Exodus; it thus regulated usage for an age in which the power 
of the father over his daughter was no longer so absolute as it had 
been in more primitive times, and places the two sexes on a position 
of equality {Com., 182 f.). 

It is quite certain that the law in Deuteronomy does put 
the man and the woman spoken of in a position of equality; 
but whether this conflicts with the law in Exodus depends 
entirely upon whether the same bondwo-man is meant in both 
places. Undoubtedly the woman in Deuteronomy is one who, 
like the manservant mentioned in the same law, has the right 
to go out of bondage at the end of six years, but voluntarily 
consents to remain in possession of her master. As evidence 
of her consent, her ear is to be bored "likewise." But in 
Exodus a particular case is specified, that of a daughter sold 
by her father; and the context shows plainly that, whether 
originally intended or not, the daughter became the concubine 
of her master or his son. The statute on the subject, when 
quoted as Driver quotes it, is really misquoted, because only 
a small part is quoted, and a part which does not fairly repre- 
sent the whole. It reads thus : 

"And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall 
not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who 
has espoused her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to 
sell her unto a strange people he shall have no power, seeing he hath 
dealt deceitfully with her. And if he espouse her unto his son, he 
shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him 
another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 75 

he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall 
she go out for nothing, without money" (xxi. 7-11). 

There are at least two very oibvious reasons for these regu- 
lations respecting this kind of a bondwoman. First, the fact 
that the daughter would not go free at the end of six years 
would discourage the sale of daughters, and prompt a poor 
man, if he w^as compelled to part with one of his children, to 
sell a son instead of a daughter. Second, after she had lived 
with her master or one of his sons as a concubine for six years, 
it would be a hardship for her, whether with children or with- 
out children, to go out free and struggle for her own support. 
She would be in the condition of a divorced wife without ali- 
mony. While concubinage was tolerated, it would be almost 
inevitable that a young woman, living in a family for six 
years, and being of the same people, and perhaps more attrac- 
tive than her master's wife or daughters, would be used as a 
concubine by some male member of the family; and conse- 
quently when her father sold her, he must have done so with 
this expectation in view, whether it was specified in the con- 
tract or not. The law recognized this fact, and treated the case 
accordingly. The law is so understood by Andrew Harper.'^ 

If, now, we suppose, as the record represents, that this law 
was made at Mount Sinai, and that Moses, at the end of the 
forty years, delivered the speeches in Deuteronomy, that which 
he says about a bondwoman going out at the end of six years 
would necessarily be understood by his hearers as including 
only those bondwomen who had come into bondage in some 
other way than by being sold by their fathers. They would 
be already familiar with the fact that the latter class were 
to be bondwomen for life. It is true that if the latter was the 
only way in which a woman could be reduced to bondage, the 
later law would have to be understood as repealing the former ; 
but the natural probability is that the sale of a daughter was a 
rarely exceptional case, and that the great majority of bond- 

' "The power which parents had over their children in Israel was 
extensive, though not much less so than that possessed, for example, 
by Roman parents. A father could sell his daughters to be espoused 
as subordinate wives — Ex. xxi. 7" {Com., 83). 



76 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

women were the wives of men who sold themselves and their 
families. In this case, he and his went ooit free at the begin- 
ning of the seventh year. 

We may remark before leaving this subject, that the case 
of a wife given to a bondman in the time of his service, men- 
tioned in the law of Exodus (xxi. 4), is undoubtedly one in 
which the woman given was a heathen bondwoman, who, with 
her children, was held in perpetual bondage, and was not 
released even in the jubile (Lev. xxv. 44-46). !N"o other bond- 
woman was so under her master's control that he could thus 
give her to a bondman. His Hebrew neighbor's daughter, if 
he held one, could be given as a wife or concubine only to his 
own son, as we have just seen above. 

The third provision of the law of bondage in which a con- 
flict is claimed, is that concerning release in the year of 
jubile. Driver puts the charge of discrepancy in these words: 

There is a third law of slavery in Lev. xxv. 39-46 (H and P). 
By this law (1) only foreigners are to be held by Israelites as slaves 
for life; (2) Hebrew slaves are to receive their liberty, not, as in 
Exodus and Deuteronomy, in the seventh year of servitude, but in the 
year of jubile (Com., 185). 

This is not a fair statement of the case; for if the law of 
release in the seventh year had been given already, as it claims 
to have been, the law that all in bondage when the year of 
jubile arrives must be released, would necessarily mean that 
all not previously released under the operation of the older 
law must then be released ; and it is unfair to say that "Hebrew 
slaves are to receive their liberty, not, as in Exodus and Deute- 
ronomy, in the seventh year." They were to receive their lib- 
erty in the seventh year, as a general rule ; but, if any did not, 
they were to receive it in the jubile. 

Driver further says: 

The usual mode of harmonizing these discrepant provisions is by 
the assumption that the law in Leviticus is intended to provide that, 
if the jubile year arrives before a Hebrew slave's seventh year of 
service, he is to receive his liberty in it. But if this had been the 
true explanation of the discrepancy, a law so circumstantial as that in 
Leviticus would surely have contained some explicit reference to the 
earlier law, and the case in which it was intended to supersede it 
would have been distinctly stated (185). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. ft 

If Professor Driver had written the law, perhaps it would 
have contained such a reference; but the method of Hebrefw 
writers was less artificial than that of modern writers, and 
many things were left, as in the natural world, for discovery 
by the reader. But even if Driver had been the writer, he 
could not have made the reference on the ground on which he 
claims that the author of Leviticus should have made it — that 
the present law was "intended to supersede" the one in Exodus. 
According .to the explanation which he combats, the law was 
intended, so far as six-year Hebrew bondmen were conceirned, 
only to release those whom the previous law had failed to 
releasa His only reply to the explanation would be a denial 
that any would thus fail to be released by the previous law. 
But this he could Jot say; for it is as plain as day that a law 
which released bondmen only after six years of service, would 
fail to release before the jubile all who had been reduced to 
bondage within less than five years previous. Tlie jubile 
came every fiftieth year ; so if a Hebrew was sold in the forty- 
fifth, or in any later up to the forty-ninth, he would have one 
or more years longer to serve when the fiftieth year began. 
That which Driver treats as an assumption, then, was an 
inevitable fact, and nothing but the blinding effect of a theory 
to be supported can account for his failure to see it. 

But this usual explanation, though good so far as it goes, 
does not bring out all the truth. The jubile would find other 
Hebrews in bondage besides those who had not served out their 
six years. The man and the woman whose ears had been 
bored, if still alive, would be released, and, whether they were 
alive or dead, their children would be released. So also would 
all thieves who had not served out the time for which they had 
been sold; for if a thief, being unable to make the restitution 
required by the law, was sold for four years' service at a time 
less than four years before the jubile, the jubile would release 
him for the remnant of his time; for the force of the law of 
jubile was to release every bondman and bondwoman of 
Hebrew blood, for whatever cause they had beeai reduced to 
bondage, and to restore every one to the landed inheritance of 



78 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

his fathers. Kightly understood, then, there was only this dif- 
ference between this law and the others, that the jubile 
released every one who had not been released b}^ the force of 
the other two laws. 

7. As to the Decalo'gue. That the Ten Commandments 
originated with Moses is firmly held by the conservative critics, 
though denied by the radicals.^ The reader may find in 
Andrew Harper's Commentary an eloquent and conclusive 
argument on this question, and also, in oppoeitiooi to Well- 
hausen and Kuenen, a demonstrative proof that the religion of 
Israel in the beginning was not polytheistic, as they and other 
infidels afiirm. But that these Ten Commandments were all 
given by Moses in the form which they now bear, is denied by 
even the conservatives; and the merits of this denial we are 
now to consider. 

The controversy turns ohiefiy upon the reasons appeaided 
to the Fourth and Eifth Commandments, and upon certain 
variations of expression in the Tenth. It is held that in their 
original form all of them were without any reasons attached — 
that they read thus: 

"Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven imaga" 

"Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy." 

"Honour thy father and thy mother." 

AH the other words now connected with these are said to 
be later additions, some made by the author of Deuteronomy, 

"Kuenen says: "Some have gone so far as to throw doubt on the 
very existence of Moses; others have denied that we are entitled any 
longer to regard him as Israel's lawgiver. This latter assertion espe- 
cially deserves serious consideration. It is quite certain that nearly 
all the laws of the Pentateuch date from much later times: if no diffi- 
culty was experienced in ascribing to him these more recent ordinan- 
ces, what guarantee have we that he promulgated any one of the 
laws?" {Rel. of Israel, I. 272). "Even the 'ten words' have not come 
down to us unaltered, so that none of them can be attributed to Moses 
without further inquiry" {ib., 139). "It need not be repeated here that 
Moses bequeathed no book of the law to the tribes of Israel. Certain- 
ly nothing more was committed to writing by him or in his time 
than the 'ten words' in their original form" (t&., II. 7). Wellhausen 
says: "If the legislation of the Pentateuch ceases as a whole to be 
regarded as authentic for our Knowledge of what Mosaism was, it be- 
comes a somewhat precarious matter to make any exception in favor 
of the Decalogue" (Art. "Israel," Encyc. Brit., Sec. 1). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 79 

and others by the supposed redactoTS of Exodus. The differ- 
ences between the two fonns of the Fo-urth, Fifth and Tenth, 
Driver presents by printing these three in parallel columns, 
which we here reproduce. The italics in the right-hand 
column show additions and changes made by the Deute- 
ronomist : 

EXODUS. DKUTERONOMV. 

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it '^'- Observe the sabbath day to keep It holy, 

holy. Sixdaysshaltthoulabor, anddoall thy a,s Jehovah thy God commanded thee. Six 
work: but the seventh day is a sabbath unto days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: 
Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt notdo any but the seventh day is a sabbath anto Jeho- 
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, vah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any 
thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 
thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, 
gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any o/thy 
and earth, and sea, and all that in them is, cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy 
and rested the seventh day: therefore Jeho- gates: in order that thy manservant and 
vah blessed the seventh day, and hallowed thy maidservant may rest us well as thou. 
it." And thott shalt remem,ber that thou irast a 

servant in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah 
thy Go-i brought thee out thence by a mighty 
hand and by a stretched out arm: there/ore 
Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the 
sabbath day.'' 

"Honor thy father and thy mother: that " Honor thy father and thy mother, as ./«- 

thy days may be long in the land which Jeho- hovah thy God commanded thee: thsit thy 
vah thy God is giving thee." days may be long, and that it may be well 

with thee, upon the land which Jehovah thy 
Godgiveth thee." 

"Thou Shalt not covet thy neighbors "^nd thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 

house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife; and thou shalt not desire thy neigh- 
wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, bor's house., his field, or his manservant, or 
or his ox. or his ass, or any thing that is thy his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or any 
neighbors.' thing that is thy neighbor's {Int., 33 ff.) 

On this exhibit Driver remarks: ^^The principal variations 
are in agreement with the style of Deuteronomy, and the 
author's hand is recognizable in them." Let this be gi'anted, 
and what does it prove? If Moses w^as the author of both 
books, it proves only that his style in Deuteronomy is different 
from that in Exodus. In other w^ords, it shows that in deliv- 
ering an oration on laws that he had given, he adopted a style 
different from that in which he wrote the laws. And w^hat 
writer of statute law^s that ever lived would not do the same? 
Let a law^yer, in commenting on a deed written for his client, 
speak in the style in which deeds to real estate are commonly 
WTitten, and how long would a jury listen to him ? Or let a 
political orator, advocating a tariff bill, speak in the style of 
the bill, and how^ long w^ould his party keep him on the stump ? 
If another than Moses wrote Deuteronomy, he, of course, wrote 
naturally in a style different from that of Exodus; and if 
Moses wrote it, he, as a matter of course, purposely did the 
same. It is nonsense, then, to argue from the difference of 



80 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

style that the two forms of these commandnieiits were written 
by different authors. 

As to the origin of the supposed additions to the original 
form of these three commandments, various conjectures ha,ve 
been advanced by critics, which would be wt>rthy of considera- 
tion if there was any proof that additions have been made. 
Labor spent in the effort is like that of the French 
savants who labored hard to answer Ben Franklin's question, 
why a vessel entirely filled with water would not run over if a 
ten-pound fish were put into it. Driver, after mentioning 
some of these, decides that the more probable view is that 
"these clauses are in their original place in Exodus," and that 
the additions in Deuteronomy are "of the nature of further 
comments upon the text of Exodus." If he had added to this 
remark the supposition that those in Exodus were not addi- 
tions at all, but that Moses wrote them, he would have disr 
played still better judgment. 

If we examine more closely the added words and clauses 
in Deuteronomy, we shall find that they are such as would 
most naturally be made by Moses in repeating oratorically to 
the people laws which he had previously given, expanding some 
of them for the sake of making them more explicit, and adding 
here and there a motive to obedience. For instance, in the 
Fourth Commandment^ where Exodus has "nor thy cattle," 
Deuteronomy has "nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy 
cattle" — naming the ox and the ass, lest some one might sup- 
pose that they were not included in "cattle," and also putting 
emphasis on the sabbath rest for the two classes of animals 
which were most given to work. The motive presented for 
keeping the sabbath, that Jehovah had delivered them from 
servitude in Egypt, was an appeal to their sense of gratitude. 
It was not given as the reason why God had sanctified the 
seventh day, but as a reason why Israel should observe it: 
"therefore Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the sab- 
bath day." The reason why God had hallowed the seventh 
day, because in creation he had rested on the seventh day, had 
been given in Exodus; and so far as it furnished a reason for 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 81 

keeping the sabbath, it was a reason applicable to all men. 
Moses, without repeating that, gives Israel a special reason 
why they should keep it, whether others did or not; and the 
reason is, gratitude to God for giving them rest from the servi- 
tude in Egypt. It was easy for every one Avho heard him, 
and who had ever heard or read the original commandment, to 
see that at this point he was not quoting the commandment, 
but adding a motive for its observance 

The addition in the Fifth Commandment, "that it may be 
well with thee," is but an expansion of the preceding clause, 
"that thy days may be long." A man's days may be long, and 
}et full of misfortunes. They were to understand that on 
condition of keeping this commandment they would have 
length of days without misfortunes. 

The variations in the Tenth Commandment are only a 
reversal of the order in which the neighbor's wife and his house 
are mentioned, which is insignificant, and the addition of "his 
field," which is included in the expression, "any thing which 
is thy neighbor's." 

There is another consideration connected with these 
changes which has been entirely overlooked by our critics. 
Their seventh-centur}^ author of Deuteronomy did not, accord- 
ing to their own hypothesis, write in his own name, but in the 
name of Moses. He wrote what he supposed Moses would 
have said if he had really delivered the drsco'urses which are 
ascribed to him. Evidently, then, he thought that it would 
have been proper for Moses to have spoken these additional 
words and clauses. In this he showed his good sense, and con- 
demns the critics who created him. 

There is another speculation of the critics which here 
deserves a passing notice. It has reference to the oxen and 
asses and fields mentioned in the Fourth and Tenth Command- 
ments. It is stated by Andrew Harper in these words: 

If the original form of these commandments was what we have 
indicated, they correspond entirely to the circumstances of the wilder- 
ness. There is no reference in them which presupposes any other 
social background than that of a people dwelling together according 
to families, possessing property, and worshiping Yahweh. None of 



82 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the commandments involves a social state different from that. But 
when Israel had entered upon its heritage, and had become possessed 
of the oxen and asses which were needed in agricultural labor and in 
settled life, this stage of their progress was reflected in the reasons 
and inducements which were added to the original commands. In 
the Fourth and Tenth Commandments in Exodus, we have, conse- 
quently, the essential commandments of the earlier day adapted to a 
new state of things; i.e., to a settled agricultural life (Com., 96). 

It is difficult to treat sucli talk as this witli seriousness. 
Mr. Harper knows very well that desert tribes, such as he sup- 
poses Israel to have been, are always owners of oxen and asses, 
except where they are extremely poor. It is notoriously true 
of the Bedawin tribes, who occupy the same wilderness at the 
present time. Indeed, their chief industry is the rearing of 
herds of cattle, asses and camels. Furthermore, how ridicu- 
lous it is to suppose that, even if Israel had not a hoof of such 
animals in the wilderness, Moses, in giving them laws for their 
future guidance, must omit the mention of animals which he 
knew they would have in the time for which he was legisla- 
ting. If one of these critics should read the will of a rich man, 
in which he gives advice to his children with reference to the 
proper use of the possessions which he bequeaths to them, he 
would sagely conclude that the will must have been written 
after the children came into possession of the property. They 
certainly would if they had a theory to be upheld by "scientific 
criticism." Here, again, their supposed Deuteronomist shows 
better judgment than theirs ; for he thought there was no incon- 
gruity in putting these words in the mouth of Moses in 
the wilderness. 

Seeing now that all the added words and clauses of the 
Decalogue found in Deuteronomy are just such as Moses, 
repeating the commandments oratorically, could most properly 
employ, and seeing that, even if these speeches were composed 
in the seventh century, the author of them himself thought 
they were appropriate in the lips of Moses, the adverse critics 
are estopped by the judgment of their own Deuteronomist, as 
well as by the maxims of common sense, from urging that 
Moses could not have been the author of both forms. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 83 

8. As to Certain Acts of Moses at Mount Sinai. There 
are several alleged contradictions between the acconnts in 
Exodus and Deuteronomy of certain acts of Moses while the 
camp was still at the foot of Mount Sinai. The first we shall 
mention has reference to his appointment of judges of tens, 
himdreds, thousands, to assist him in administering justice. 
The case is presented by Driver in these words: 

In i. 9-13 the plan of appointing judges to assist Moses is repre- 
sented as originating with Moses himself, complaining to the people 
of the difficulty that he found in dealing personally with the number 
of cases that arose; the people assent to the proposal, and Moses 
selects the judges accordingly. In Ex. xviii. 13-26 the plan is referred 
entirely to the advice of Jethro; no allusion is made to the difficulty 
felt by Moses; and Moses takes action without at all consulting the 
people {Com., xxxv.).' 

This passage opens with a misstatement. It Is not said in 
i. 9-13 that the plan originated with Moses. If this had been 
said, there would have been a contradiction. The passage reads 
thus : "And I spake to you at that time, saying, I am not able 
to bear you myself alone; Jehovah your God hath multiplied 
you, and, behold, ye are this day like the stars of heaven for 
'multitude. Jehovah, the God of your fathers, make you a 
thousand times so many as ye are, as he hath promised you. 
How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your 
burden, and your strife?" — then comes the command to select 
the judges. Does this conflict with the statement in Exodus 
that Jethro had first suggested the plan to Moses before he sub- 
mitted it to the people ? If it does, then, should the President 
of the United States submit a measure to Congress, and should 
it afterward be discovered that it was suggested to him by one 
of his secretaries, our modei-n scientific critics would find here 
an irreconcilable inconsistency ! The President, as everybody 
knows, is not bound to tell whether the measures which he pro- 
poses originated with himself or with some of his advisers; 



® Wellhausen, who denies that Moses made the stay at Mount 
Sinai described in Exodus, declares that Jethro's advice was given, not 
at Mount Sinai, but "at the well of Kadesh" (Art. "Israel," Encyc. 
Brit., 407, col. 1; 408, col. 2). In saying this, he deliberately falsifies 
the history without the slightest provocation. 



84 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

neither was Moses obliged to tell the people that his judiciary 

scheme originated with Jethro. As Jethro was not an 

Israelite, there maj have been prudence in withholding 

from them this information until they themselves expressed 

approval of the measiira 

The second conflict has reference to the number of times 

that Moses ascended the mount, and fasted : 

According to Ex. xxxii. 34, Moses was three times in the mount 
(xxxii. Iff.; xxxii. 31; xxxiv. 4); but it is only on the third occasion 
that he is recorded to have fasted (xxxiv. 28). Deuteronomy (ix. 9), 
in the very words of Exodus, describes him as doing so on the first 
occasion (i6., xxxvi.). 

This is an incorrect representation; for the ascent 
described in Deuteronomy is the one on the return from which 
he broke the tables of stone (ix. 17) ; and this was the second 
ascent described in Exodus. The first was when he was 
called up before the Ten Commandments were spoken, and 
was sent down to warn the people not to draw near the mount 
(Ex. xix. 20-25). The second ascent described in Deuteron- 
omy is the one his descent from which is described in Ex. 
xxxii. 7-9, almost in the words of Deuteronomy. The only 
difference as respeets fasting is that it is mentioned in the 
one account and omitted in the other. It is absurd to call this 
a contradiction. Driver himself does not commit this absurd- 
ity; for he closes the paragraph just quoted in part, with the 
remark, "Obviously Deuteronomy may relate what is passed 
by in silence in Exodus ; but the variation is remarkable." It 
is not at all remarkable, for if, when Moses delivered the 
speeches in Deuteronomy, Exodus had already been vmtten^ 
and the fact made known to the people that he fasted during 
the last forty days in the mount, there was great propriety in 
now telling them, what they had not learned before, that he also 
fasted during the first forty days. In reality, he was com- 
pelled to fast or be fed miraculously; for there was no food 
to be found on the naked rock of which Mount Sinai is com- 
posed. To charge contradiction here is to betray a careless 
study of the facts, mingled with a determined purpose to make 
out a case. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 85 

The third specification has reference to the point of time at 
which Moses made his intercession for the people: 

Chap. ix. 25-29. This, it is plain, must refer either to Ex. xxxii. 
31 ff. (Moses' second visit to the mountain), or (more probably) to 
Ex. xxxiv. 9, 28 (his third visit to it). It is singular, now that 
the terms of Moses' own intercession, as here reproduced, are bor- 
rowed, not from either of these passages, but from xxxii. 11-13, at 
the close of his first forty days upon the mountain (t&. xxxvi.). 

Here, again, the learned author treats Ex. xxxii. 31 ff. as an 
account of Moses' second visit to the mountain, whereas it is 
an account of his intercession for the people between his second 
and his third visit. The words, ^^And Moses returned unto 
Jehovah, and said. Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and 
have made them gods of gold'' (31), seem to have misled him 
to the thought that the return was to the mountain-top. But 
the context shows plainly that this intercession was conducted 
in the tent of Moses (cf. vii. 11), and the account of it is imme- 
diately followed by the statement that "Jehovah said to Moses, 
Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will 
write upon the tables the words which I wrote on the first 
tables, which thou brakest And be ready by the morning, and 
come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself 
there to me on the top of the mount" (xxxiv. 1, 2). The 
account of the intercession given in Exodus follows immedi- 
ately upon his return from the mount when he broke the tablee 
of stone (xxxii. 19 ff.), and so it does in Deuteronomy (ix. 
17 ff.). There is perfect agreement as to tJie occasion of it, 
and the objectors are again convicted of inventing the charge 
of contradiction, and misconstruing the text to sustain it. 

The fourth and last specification we shall notice has refer- 
ence to the time at which the ark was made for the reception 
of the two tables of stone. It is claimed that in Deuteronomy 
the ark was made by Moses just preceding his return to the 
mount with the two new tables of stone, whereas in Exodus it 
is made by Bezaleel after Moses returned from that visit. 
The author places the two passages side by side, and 
then remarks; 



S6 TH^ AUTHORSHIP OF 

There is only one material difference between the two accounta 
but it is an important one. In Ex. xxxiv. 1-4 there is no mention 
of the ark, which, according to Deuteronomy, Moses made at this 
time for the reception of the two tables, and in which (verse 5) he 
placed them after coming down from the mount. This difference 
between Exodus and Deuteronomy does not admit of explanation. In 
Exodus instructions respecting the ark are given in xxv. 10-21; and 
Bezaleel, having been commissioned to execute the work of the sanc- 
tuary (xxxi. Iff.; xxxv. 30 to xxxvi. 1), makes the ark (xxxvii. 1-9). 
There is, of course, no difficulty in supposing that Moses may have 
been described as making himself what was in fact made, under his 
direction, by Bezaleel; but in Deuteronomy Moses is instructed to 
make, and actually does make, the ark of acacia wood before ascend 
ing the mount for the second time to receive the tables of stone; 
whereas in Exodus the command to make the ark is both given to 
Bezaleel and executed by him after Moses' return from the mountain 
(xxxv. 30 ff.; xxxvi. 2; xxxvii. 1). 

We shall be helped to understand this matter by first draw- 
ing out in detail, and with careful reference to chronology, the 
account in Exodus. Observe, then, that the first coonmand to 
make the ark was given to Moses during his first fotrty days 
in the mount, and he was told, "In the ark thou shalt put 
the testimony that I shall give thee" (xxiv. 18; xxv. 10, 21). 
This was before the first tables were given to him. At the 
end of that forty days he received the tables, started down 
the mountain, and, seeing the idolatry in the camp, threw 
them down and broke them (xxxi. 18; xxxii. 15-19). Then 
co'mes his intercession for the people in his own tent which 
he pitched outside the camp and called the "tent of meeting," 
and at the close of it he is coimmanded to hew twO' new tables 
of stone, and return into the mount, which he does (xxxiii. 
7-23; xxxiv. 1-4). At the close of the second forty days he 
receives the new tables of stone, and brings them down in 
safety (xxxiv. 28, 29). Then, after calling upon the people 
for contributions of material and labor for the construction 
of the tabernacle, and receiving an abundance (xxxv. 1-29), 
he appoints Bezaleel and Aholiab chief constructors (30-35). 
and commands the former to make, among other articles, the 
ark of acacia wood (xxxvii. 1). On the first day of the sec- 
ond year after leaving Egypt, everything was completed, the 
tabernacle was erected, the tables were put into the ark, and 
the latter put in its place (xl. 17-21). This last act of put- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 8t 

ting the tables of stone into the ark occurred about seven 
months after the last descent of Moses from the mount, and 
this descent occurred not less than fifty or sixty days after 
the first command to make the ark. Approximately, nine 
months passed between the first command to make the ark, 
and the final deposit of the tables within it: and the account 
of all runs through sixt-een chapters of Exodus, here a little 
and there a little. 

^ow, the whole of this story is summarized in Deuteron- 
omy in the space of five verses, and it reads as follows: ^^At 
that time Jehovah said to me. Hew thee two tables of stone 
like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and 
make thee an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables 
the words tJiat were on the first tables w^hich thou brakest, and 
thou shalt put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia 
wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and 
went up into the mount, having the two tables in mine hand. 
And he wrote on the two tables, according to the first writing, 
the ten commandments, which Jehovah spake to you out of the 
midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and Jehovah 
gave them to me. And I turned and came down from the 
mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and 
there they be, as Jehovab. commanded me" (x. 1-5). 

Here it is very obvious that the order of time in whicli 
the various steps were taken, and which is so distinctly stated 
in Exodus, is not observed. The differences are correctly 
stated by Driver. Moreover, it must be admitted that if the 
two accounts were written independently of each other, and 
by different authors, there is a contradiction with reference 
to the time at which the ark was made. But how is it, if, 
instead of adopting this theory to start with, we start with 
the representation which Deuteronomy makes of itself? That 
is, that Moses, having proceeded, in ascending the mountain 
and aftervvard in making the ark as described in Exodus, and 
having written that book, he is now addressing an oration to 
the people who knew from memory what he had done, and 
had also read or heard the account of that doing? They 



88 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

would, of course, see, even more readily than we do, that he 
now mentions some of the facts in the reverse order without 
meaning that they occurred in that order, but because it suited 
his purpose, and he could do so without misleading a single 
one of his hearers. It should be observed, too, that in his 
present statements of the steps taken he uses no adverb of 
time to show that they were taken in the order in which he 
mentions them. The passage, theu, is perfectly free from 
contradictions, and was perfectly understood to be so by those 
who heard Mose®. It is only when the critic has separated 
Moses from Deuteronomy that he can use this passage to just- 
ify the separation. In other words, he cuts the cord which 
binds the book to its author, and then proves that the author 
did not write the book by the fact that the cord has been cut. 
Again and again is this fallacy perpetrated. 

9. As to the Mission of the Spies. It is persistently asserted 
by destructive critics that there are several contradictions in 
the accounts of this incident. Robertson Smith undertakes to 
show that the account in the thirteenth and fourteenth chap- 
ters of N'umbers is made up of two contradictory stories blend- 
ed together so awkwardly that they can be separated. He ac- 
cordingly prints them in parallel columns, placing xiii. 21, 25, 
26, 32, and xiv. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 26-35, 36-38, on the left 
hand, and xiii. 20, 22, 26, 27-29, 30, 31-33, and xiv. 1, 4, 11- 
25, 39-45, on the right. But neither column makes a com- 
plete story; and of that on the right he is constrained to ad- 
mit, "It has lost its beginning and a few links at other points" 
(0. T.^ 400 f.). This admission is strikingly true. The col- 
umn is like a snake that has lost its head and a few sections 
of its body, and it has the appearance of the disjected parts 
of an india-rubber snake made to frighten children. Later 
writers, such as Driver and Addis, though they follow Smith 
and his predecessors in asserting that there are contradictions, 
are not so incautious as to copy these disjointed fragments. 

The alleged contradictions are three in number : First, that 
while in Numbers (xii. 1) God issues the command to send 
the spies, in Deuteronomy (i. 22, 23) the request to send them 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 89 

comes from the people, and Moses consents to it, but nothing 
is said about God's command. Second, in !N'umbers (verse 
21) the spies go as far north as ^^the entering in of Hamath," 
while in Deuteronomy (i. 23-25) they go only as far a^ He- 
bron. Third, when they return, one of the stories in IN'um- 
bers represents Caleb alone as contending that Israel can take 
the land, and as being exempt from the sentence of death 
in the wilderness, while the other represents Joshua as taking 
part with Caleb. 

To take the last of these allegations first, we remark that 
only after Robertson Smith has split up the narrative in !N^imi- 
bers into two disjointed pieces, and thrown what is said of 
Caleb into one and what is said of Joshua into the otber, is 
the slightest shadow of a contradiction apparent It is a con- 
tradiction of his own creation. The text of Numbers as it 
stands, while it speaks of Caleb alone at first as remonstrating 
with the people (xiii. 30), includes Joshua with him toward 
the close of the account (xiv. 6), and the same precisely is 
true of the account in Deuteronomy (i. 36, 38). So plain 
is this made in both accounts, that readers of the Bible the 
world over have understood that both of these men gave a 
true account of the land, and were both exempted from the 
sentence which was passed upon the rest of the people. 

The first and second of these so-called contradictions are 
nothing more than cases of omission in the briefer of the two 
accounts. Nothing in tbe experience of the people addressed 
by Moses could have been, more familiar than this piece of 
history; for it furnished the reason why, instead of entering 
the promised land within less than two years after they left 
Egypt, they had been kept out of it for more than thirty- 
eight years longer. It explained the deplorable fact that all 
the fathers and mothers of the persons addressed, to the num- 
ber of more than a million, had perished in the wilderness. 
In referring to it, therefore, as a warning, Moses could with 
perfect propriety mention such parts of the story as suited 
his hortatory purpose, and omit all others, witliout the s-light- 
est appearance of ignoring them, much less of denying their 



90 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

existence. He accordingly treats of the whole subject in the 
space of twenty-four verses (i. 22-46), whereas the original 
account in ISTumbers contains seventy-eight. He abbreviates 
by omitting many well-remembered incidents. He omits the 
names of the twelve spies and those of the tribes which they 
respectively represented (4-16) ; he omits the whole of the 
long list of directions which he gave them (17-20) ; he omits 
the season of the year in which they were sent (21) ; he omits 
the names of the giants whose people were found at Hebron 
(21, 22) ; he omits the number of days that were occupied in 
the journey (25) ; he omits the detailed account the spies gave 
of the location of the different tribes in the land (29) ; he 
omits the thrilling incidents of himself and Aaron falling on 
their faces before the people, of the urgent pleadings made 
by Caleb and Joshua., and the proposal of the people to stone 
these four men (xiv. 5-10) ; he omits his own long and earn- 
est pleading with God against the latter^s proposal to slay the 
whole multitude and raise up a people from Moses to inherit 
the land (11-21) ; he omits the greater part of the final sen- 
tence upon the rebels (28-35) ; and he omits the fact that the 
ten false spies died of a plague (36, 37). In the midst of 
such a multitude of omissions, why should it be thought strange 
that he omitted to state the whole distance that the spies jour- 
neyed, and the fact that God directed him to send them? To 
look the facts in the face is all that is necessary to see the 
impertinence and absurdity of the charge of contradiction. 
Driver himself, in the very act of presenting the first of these 
three charges, furnishes a satisfactory answer to it. He says : 

Here (Deut. i. 22, 23) the mission of the spies is represented as 
due entirely to a suggestion made by the people; in Num. xiii. 1-3 
it is referred to as a command received directly hy Moses from 
Jehovah. No doubt the two representations are capable, in the 
abstract, of being harmonized: Moses, it might be supposed, approv- 
ing personally of the purpose (Deut. i. 23), desired to know if it had 
Jehovah's sanction; and the command in Numbers (xiii. 1-3) is really 
the answer to his inquiry. 

What could be more reiasonable than this, especially as 
Moses was not in the habit of adopting measures that might 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. &1 

involve the lives of a dozen eminent men without God's ap- 
proval? Seeing, then, that this obvious explanation is right 
at hand, so close that, had it been a serpent, it would have 
bitten Robertson Smith and his imitators, why did these inge- 
nious men make out of it a contradiction ? Why, unless they 
were on the search for contradictions when they should have 
been searching for the truth? They were fighting, not to de- 
fend the Bible, but to bring it into disrepute. So we are com- 
pelled to judge them in much of their work. 

10. As to the Time Spent at Kadesh. It is universally as- 
sumed by destructive critics that the stay of Israel at Kadesh- 
Barnea is represented in Numbers as lasting thirty-eight years ; 
while in Deuteronomy, contrary to this, they spent the thirty- 
eight years circling Mount Seir. Driver, in his Commentary 
(31-33), treats the subject elaborately; but the discrepancy 
as he understands it is sufficiently presented in the following 
sentence : 

If the present narrative in Numbers be complete, the thirty- 
eight years in the wilderness will have been spent at Kadesh: noth- 
ing is said of the Israelites moving elsewhere; and the circuit round 
Edom (Num. xxi. 4) will have taken place at the close of this period, 
merely in order to enable the Israelites to reach the east side of 
Jordan. In this case the representation in Deut. ii. 1, 14, according 
to which the thirty-eight years of the wanderings are occupied entirely 
with circling about Mount Seir, will be irreconcilable with JE (that 
is, with Numbers)." 

The only way to determine the reality of this alleged con- 
tradiction is to trace carefully the representations in the two 
books separately, and then compare them to see their differ- 
ences, if any appear. We begin with that in lN"umbers. In 
xiv. 25, after the sentence has been pronounced on the men 
of that generation, God issues the command, "To-morrow turn 
ye, and get you into the wilderness by the way to the Red 
Sea." Driver says of this, "Whether they did this, is not 
stated;" and it is true that it is not stated; but the command 

"In this he follows Wellhausen, who says: "After turning aside 
to Sinai as related in Exodus, the emigrants settled at Kadesh east- 
ward from Goshen, on the southern borders of Palestine, where they 
remained for many years" (Art. "Israel," Encyc. Brit., p. 407, col. 1). 



92 THi: AUTHORSHIP OF 

was given, and Moses, who was the leader and commander 
of the host, always moved at God's command; and the pillar 
of cloud, which guided every movement, undoubtedly did the 
same. It is not necessary, then, that the text should say they 
did mova On the contrary, it would require a statement of 
the text that they did not move, to justify us in supposing 
that they did not. But this inference, plain as it is, is not 
our only ground for concluding that they obeyed the com- 
mand. In later verses of the same chapter (32, 33) God says 
to the people: "Your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness. 
And your children shall be wanderers in the wilde^mess forty 
years, and shall bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be 
consumed in the wilderness." How could they be "wander- 
ers in the wilderness forty years" if they remained thirty- 
eight years at Kadesh ? It is necessarily implied that they 
were to leave Kadesh and wander about. 

The narrative next proceeds through chapters xv.-xix. of 
iN'umbers, with a group of new statutes (xv. 1-41) ; the ac- 
count of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (xvi. 
40) ; the punishment of those who murmured over the fate 
of these men and their fellow conspirators (41-50) ; the con- 
firmation of Aaron's priesthood (xvii. 1-13) ; some new stat- 
utes in reference to the priesthood and the Levitos (xviii. 1- 
32) ; and the statute in reference to the ashes of the red heifer 
(xix. 1-22). Then comes the statement: "And the children 
of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilder- 
ness of Zin in the first month; and the people abode in Ka- 
desh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there" (xxi. 1). 
How could it be here said that after these intervening events 
"they came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and 
abode in Kadesh," if they had been in Kadesh during the 
whole intervening time? Undoubtedly this is a return to 
Kadesh ; and the assertion that they "abode in Kadesh," gross- 
ly misinterpreted as referring to the whole thirty-eight years, 
clearly refers to the stay there after this return. The first 
month here mentioned, as all parties agree, is the first month 
of the fortieth year. We need not go outside the Book of 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, 93 

Numbers, then, the very book which is charged with teaching 
that Israel abode at Kadesh thirty-eight years, to see that by 
necessary implications it shows that they left Kadesh after 
the affair of the spies, wandered in the wilderness until all 
but the last of the forty years had expired, and them re 
turned again to Kadesh. 

This conclusion, drawn from, the course of the events, is 
sustained by the evidence of the itinerary of the wilderness 
wanderings, also recorded in ]!^umbers. In this itinerary 
(Kum. xxxiii.) Kadesh is mentioned only once, it being the 
intention of the writer to name the forty-two places of for- 
mal encampment, without regard to the number of times that 
Israel may have encamped at any one place. When Kadesh 
is mentioned, it is, as we have seen, in connection with the 
arrival there in the first month of the fortieth year. But 
they reached that place, and sent forth the twelve spies at 
the time of the first ripe grapes in the second year out of 
Egypt (xiii. 20). Hazeroth is the last camping-place men- 
tioned in the account of the journey before reaching Kadesh 
(xii. 16, cf. xiii. 26) ; but in the itinerary there are between 
Hazeroth and Kadesh nineteen encampments. This could not 
have been true of the first arrival in Kadesh; consequently we 
must conclude that these nineteen encampments were made 
between the first and the second arrival in that place, or dur- 
ing the wanderings of thirty-eight years, of which we know 
but little. Thus it appears, from every point of view fur- 
nished by the Book of IN'umbers, that this interval of thirty- 
eight years was not spent at Kadesh, but at encampments lying 
in between the first and the second visit to that place. 

M>w let us turn to Deuteronomy, and see if there is any- 
thing there to contradict this conclusion. Here, in ii. 14, Mo- 
ses says to the people: "And the days in which we came from 
Kadesh-Bamea, until we came over the brook Zeresh, were 
thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men 
of war were consumed from the midst of the camp, as Jehovah 
sware unto them." Tho tenns here employed show that he 
is counting from the time that Jehovah sware this; that is, 



94 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

from the first visit to Kadesh. This is made equally dear by 
the fact that the places of encampment since the last visit to 
that place are named in Num. xxxiii. 38-44, and they are 
only &ve in number. The first of them, Mount Hor, was 
reached in the fifth month of the last year of the wanderings 
(xxxiii. 38), and the others were passed a little later in the 
same year. The "many days'' that they spent in compassing 
Mount Seir (the land of Edom), which Driver understands 
as including the thirty-eight ye-ars, were spent aftei" leaving 
Kadesh the last time ; for Moses says : "So ye abode in Kadesh 
many days, according to the days that ye abode thecre. Then 
we turned, and took our journey into the wilderness by the 
way to the Eed Sea, as Jehovah spake to me: and we com- 
passed mount Seir many days" (Deut. i. 46-ii. 1). The cir- 
cuit occupied many days compared with the small space around 
which they had to pass. The many days which they spent 
at Kadesh inoluded. the forty spent by the spies in their march 
through Canaan, together with some days previous, and some 
days after this march, and, during the last visit, the days of 
mourning for Miriam, probably thirty, and much the greateir 
part of the time from the first mouth to the fifth, in which 
they reached Mount Hor (Num. xx. 1, 22). 

This instance of alleged contradiction illustrates the ease 
with which an allegation of the kind can be made after a 
careless examination of the text in search of contradictions, 
and the success with which the charge can be refuted wheu 
the same text is examined with proper care. 

11. As to the Time of Consecrating the Levites. The 
time of this event is stated in a general way in this passage: 
"And I turned and came down from the mount, and put 
the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be', 
as Jehovah commanded me. (And the children of Israel jour- 
neyed from Beeroth Bene-jaakan to Moserah: there Aaron 
died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son minis- 
tered in the priest's office in his stead. From thence they 
journeyed to Judgodah; and from Judgodah to Jotbathah, a 
land of brooks of water. At that time Jehovah separated the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 95 

tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, 
to stand before Jehovah to minister to him, to bless in his 
name, unto this day)" (x. 5-8). 

If one should read this passage without observing the fact 
that a parenthesis begins with the words, "And the chil- 
dren of Israel journeyed,'' and that there is a total discon- 
nection between this and the next preceding thought, he might 
suppose that Moses here fixes the consecration of the Levites 
at a time subsequent to the death of Aaron, and of certain 
journeys that followed his death. But the parenthetical na- 
ture of the intervening clauses, together with the change of 
address from the second person (verse 4) to the third ("the 
children of Israel journeyed"), show plainly that we have 
here an interpolation by another than the original speaker. 
The reference in the vmrds, "At that time Jehovah separated 
the tribe of Levi," is unquestionably to the time when he came 
down from the mount and put the tables* in the ark, mentioned 
before the parenthesis; and this agrees with the account in. 
Exodus. On this passage Driver makes these remarks : 

If X. 6, 7 be an integral part of Deuteronomy, "at that time" can 
in that case only refer to the period indicated in those verses, and 
verses 8 and 9 will assign the consecration of the tribe of Levi to 
a much later date than is done in Ex. xxviii. 29; Lev. viii.; Num. ill 
5-10. If, however, verses 6 and 7 be not original in Deuteronomy, 
"at that time" will refer to the period of sojourn at Horeb (i. 5); 
in this case there ceases to be a contradiction with Exodus. 

He might as well have saved himself the trouble of wri- 
ting this, for he answers his own objection in the very act 
of presenting it. This "if" introduces the reality in the case. 

12. As to the Sentence on Moses and Aaron. In connec- 
tion with his recital of the sentence pronounced on the people 
of Israel after the report of the spies, Moses says : "Also Jeho- 
vah was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou shalt 
not go in thither. Joshua the son of !N'un, who standeth before 
thee, he shall go in thither : encourage thou him ; for he shall 
cause Israel to inherit it" (Deut. i. 37, 38). On these verses 
Driver makes the comment : 

Neither the position of these two verses, nor their contents, can 
be properly explained unless they are held to refer to some incident 



96 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

which took place immediately after the return of the spies. If that 
be the case, they will present another (cf. verse 36) of the many 
examples which the Pentateuch contains of a double tradition: accord- 
ing to Deuteronomy, Moses was forbidden to enter Canaan in conse- 
quence of the people's disobedience at Kadesh in the second year of 
the Exodus: according to P (Num. xx. 12; xxvii. 13 f.; Deut. xxxii. 
50 f . ) , it was on account of his presumption at the same spot, but 
on a different occasion, thirty-seven years afterward (Com., 26, 27). 

There would be plausibility in this reipresentatio'n if noth- 
ing more were said on the subject in Deuteronomy, and if both 
accounts were derived, as Driver assumes, from oral tradition, 
one running for seven hundred years, and the other for one 
thousand. In that case neither would be worth the paper on 
which it is printed. But in the last passage which he himself 
cites parenthetically (Deiut. xxxii. 50 f.), the same account of 
God's anger against Moses is given as in Numbers. There it 
is declared that God said to Moses, "Get thee up into this 
mountain of Abarim, unto mount !N'ebo . . . and die in the 
mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people ; 
as Aaron thy brother died at mount Hor, and was gathered 
unto his people; because ye transgressed against me in the 
midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah 
of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanc- 
tified me not in the midst of the children of Israel." This 
is the testimony of Deuteronomy when, instead of a mere 
allusion, as in i. 36, 37, a full account is given. There is, 
then, not a shadow of inconsistency between the two books. 
But the destructive critics refuse to let the matter rest thus. 
In order to still make out a contradiction, which is impossible 
with the text as it is, they resort to the device of robbing the 
Deuteronomist of this latter passage, and assign it to P, the 
hypothetical author of the account in !N'umbers. This is their 
constant device when the text as it is can not be harmonized 
with the theory to be sustained. 

We must here insist again, as in all of these alleged contra- 
dictions, that the only way to ascertain whether they are real, 
is to try them on the groimd on which they claim to s-tand^j 
This portion of Deuteronomy claims to be a speech delivered 
by Moses to the Israelites near the close of their wanderings, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 97 

when the last of the scenes at Kadesh was less than a year in 
the past, and the earliest of them a little over thirty-seven years^ 
while both were as distinctly remembered by every middle- 
aged man and woman in the audience as w^as the battle of 
Bunker Hill by the American people forty years after it was 
fought. To such an audience many allusions to those events 
which might be puzzling to one who was not familiar with 
details, would be perfectly intelligible. If, then, as Deuteron- 
omy represents, and as l^umbers represents, the anger of God 
against Moses and Aaron was because of the sin at Meribah, 
when he mentioned it in connection with the sin of the people 
after the report of the spies, they could not have thought that 
he meant to connect it in point of time with the latter event. 
They would know that he mentioned it in that connection 
because of the similarity of his fate with theirs — a most nat- 
ural connection of thought. And when he said, "God was 
angry w^ith me on your account, '^ they could not think that he 
meant on account of their rebellion when the spies reported, 
because they well knew that Moses had done his very best to 
dissuade them from that sin, even risking his own life at their 
hands in the effort.. They would remember that it was their 
murmuring for want of water which caused Moses to act as he 
did, and that thus indirectly God was angry with him on their 
account. How smoothly the stream of narration flows when 
it is thus permitted to follow its own channel; and how dis- 
cordant when divided and led into ditches dug by its enemies. 
13. As to the Asylum for the Manslayer. Driver says: 

In Ex. xxi. 13 the asylum for manslaughter (as the connection 
with verse 14 seems to show) is Jehovah's altar (cf. I. Kings i. 50; 
ii. 28); in Deuteronomy (c. 19) definite cities are set apart for the 
purpose {Com., 37). 

To the same effect Kobertson Smith says: 

The asylum for the manslayer in Ex. xxi. 12-14 is Jehovah's altar, 
and so, in fact, the altar was used in the time of David and Solomon. 
But under the law of Deuteronomy, there are to be three fixed cities 
of refuge — Deut. xix. 1, seq. (0. T., 354). 

The issue here turns on the correctness of the first assertion 
in these two statements. Is it true that the law in Exodus 



98 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

made the altar of Jehovah a sanctuary for the manslayer ? It 
reads thus: ^^He that smiteth a man so that he die, he shall 
surely be put to death. And if a man lie not in wait, but 
God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a 
place whither he shall flee. And if a man come presumptu- 
ously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile; thou shalt 
take him from mine altar, that he may die." 

This law, instead of making the altar an asylum for the 
manslayer, positively forbids its use as such. It is to furnish 
no protection, not even temporary protection, from death. On 
the contrary, this statute contains the promise, "I will appoint 
thee a place whither he shall flee.'' This promise was fulfilled 
in the appointment of the cities of refuge, and it was provided 
that every man who killed his neighbor might find asylum 
there until the time of his trial, and might remain there after 
his trial if he was found not worthy of death (Deut. xix. 
1-13). The cases referred to by both of these writers as 
occurring in the time of David and Solomon are those of 
Adonijah and Joab. But both of these, though they fled to 
the altar in the hope of being spared, were slain; and Joab 
was slain by the coimmand of Solomon while clinging to the 
horns of the altar (I. Kings i. 50, 51; ii. 24, 25, 29-34). This 
is a unique way of proving that the altar was an asylum for 
the manslayer — instances in which it furnished no protection 
whatever. If it should be asked why Joab fled to the altar, 
if it was not an asylum, the answer must be, not that it was an 
asylum — for Solomon did not recognize it as such — ^but because 
he thought Ithat possibUy he might not be slain there, lest 
human blood might defile the altar. 

In this instance a provision of the law has been misrepre- 
sented and its meaning reversed, in order to make out a con- 
tradiction with another airrangement which it actually provided 
for in promise. Scarcely anything could be more reprehen- 
sible. 

But there is still another phase to this reprehensible use 
of Scripture. If God made a law by the hand of Mo'Ses, as 
these men would have us believe, that his altar should bei an 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 99 

asylum for the willful murderer; and if this law was recog- 
nized as his by such rulers as David and Solomon, how can it 
be accounted for that an unknown author in the days- of Josiah 
deliberately legislated to the reverse of this law, and that the 
people of Judah accepted the innovation without a word? 
Again: If, down to the time of this new legislation, the altar 
of Jehovah had been the asylum for the manslayer, how is it 
that this new and unknow^n legislator made the people believe 
that in all their past history back to Moses there had been 
cities of refuge into which the murderer could flee for tempo- 
rary asylum ? Were the Israelites of Josiah' s day, including 
Josiah himselfj a set of idiots, or have the critics who argue 
as Driver and Kobertson Smith do, lost their heads ? 
14. As to the Year of Release: 

It is not claimed that there is a positive contradiction between 
Exodus and Deuteronomy on this subject, but doubt is thrown on 
the origin of the latter by the remark that "had both laws been 
framed by Moses, it is difficult not to think that in formulating 
Deut. XV. 1-6 he would have made some allusion to the law of Ex 
xxiii. 10 f., and mentioned that, in addition to the provisions there 
laid down, the sabbatical year was to receive this new application" 
{Com., 38, cf. 174 ff.). 

We can best judge of this by copying the two laws, and 
seeing them together. The law in Exodus is this: "And six 
years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the increase 
thereof; but the seventh year tho'U shalt let it rest and lie 
fallow; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they 
leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner shalt 
thou deal wath thy vineyard and thy oliveyard." 

The law in Deuteronomy reads thus : "At the end of every 
seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner 
of the release: every creditor shall release that which he hath 
lent unto his neighbors; he shall not exact it of his neighbor 
and his brother; because Jehovah's release hath been pro- 
claimed. Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it; but whatso- 
ever of thine is with thy brother thine hand shall release." 

It is true, as Driver observes, that in formulating this 
latter law there is no allusion made to the former; but why 
should there be? The two provisions are perfectly indepen- 
.L.ofC. 



100 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

dent of each otlieir, so that neither wonld necessarily suggest 
the other. And if, as Driver affirms, it is difficult not to think 
that Moi&es, in formulating the latter, would have made some 
allusion to the former, why is it not equally difficult, and even 
more so, if some other man, seven hundred years later than 
Moses, had been the writer? If the former consideratiooi 
argues that Moses was not the author, it argues with greater 
force that a man in the days of Josiah was not the author, and 
it i.8 equally good to prove that nobody at all was the author. ^^ 

Finally, if Moses did not give this law of release from 
debt, but did give the law of rest for the land, and if the latter 
law had been the recognized law of the seventh year ever since 
the time of Moses, how could any man, in the seventh century 
after Moses, dare to write that Moses also gave the law of 
release from deht — a law of which no human being had heard 
until that day ? Who could believe him ? And who could 
be expected to obey this pretended law by releasing his cred- 
itors from paying just debts? The enactment wo^uld be too 
absurd for any but a lunatic. 

15. As tO' Eating Firstlinga One of the most plausible 

in the whole list of the alleged contr'adictions has reference 

to the eating of the firstlings of the flocks and herds, and of 

the tithes. Thci charge is compactly stated by Driver in these 

words: 

In Deut. xii. 6, 17, the firstlings of oxen and sheep are to he eaten 
by the owner himself at a sacred feast to be held at the central sanc- 
tuary. In Num. xviii. 18, they are assigned absolutely and expressly 
to the priest {Com., xxxix.). 



"In regard to the year of rest for the land, Kuenen says: "The 
Pentateuch itself testifies that this precept was not observed before 
the exile" {Rel. of Israel, II. 36). He cites, in proof of the assertion, 
Lev. xxvi. 34, 35, 43; and compares II. Chron. xxxvi. 21. But the 
passage in Leviticus is a prediction that God will scatter Israel among 
the nations on account of their iniquities, and that then the land 
should enjoy its sabbaths which it had not enjoyed while they dwelt 
in it; and the one in II. Chronicles that the years of exile were fixed 
at seventy by Jeremiah, "Until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: 
for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore 
and ten years." Now, the number of sabbatical years which had 
passed since the occupation of Canaan was about 120; from which it 
seems that fifty of the sabbatical years had been observed. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 101 

In this case neither of the provisions is accredited by our 
critics to Moses. The one in IN'umbers is ascribed to P, who 
wrote, according to the theoiy, about two hundred years after 
Deuteronomy was published. But Deuteronomy, from the 
time of its publication, was acknowledged by the Jews as God's 
law given by Moses. If, then, during these two hundred 
years, it had been the practice in Israel, according to the 
express letter of God's supposed law, for every man to eat his 
own firstling oxen and sheep, how did P dare to publish a 
new law requiring the o^vner to give up his God-given right 
in this particular, and turn over his firstlings to the priest? 
Moreover, P wrote, not in his own name, but in the name of 
Moses, claiming, equally with the author of Deuteronomy, that 
his laws were given by Moses; how, then, could he dare to thus 
represent Moses as contradicting himself, and how could he 
hope that anybody would receive his new law l How, indeed, 
can the critic account for the fact that Israel did receive both 
of these contradictory laws as having been given by Jehovah 
through Moses ? 'Ko answer has been given to these questions ; 
and none can be given that will relieve the theory of prac- 
tical absurdity. 

On the other hand, if the law in !N^umbers was written by 
Moses, and not by the hypothetical P, and if it had been the 
law, from the days of Moses to the days of Josiah, that the 
priest should have the flesh of the firstlings, how could the 
writer of Deuteronomy dare to say that it had also been the 
law, ever since Moses lived, that the firstlings were to be eaten 
by the owner and his family ? He would have betrayed him- 
self and his book of law as a fraud, had he done so. These 
considerations necessarily raise a doubt whether the alleged 
contradiction really exists; and they force us to be very slow 
in admitting that it does. They suggest that possibly the 
exegesis which supports the charge of contradiction may 
be erroneous. 

To test this suggestion, let us now examine the several pas- 
sages "with care. The one in lumbers is unambiguous, and 
it does, as Driver affirms, give the firstlings to the priest. 



102 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Addressing Aaron, Jehovah says: "But the firstling of an ox, 
or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt 
not redeem; they are holy: thou shalt sprinkle their blood 
upon the altar, and shalt bum their fat for an offering made 
by fire, for a sweet savour unto Jehovah. And the flesh of 
them shall be thine, as the wave breast and the right thigh; 
it shall be thine'' (xviii. 17, 18). 

The first of the three passages in Deuteronomy reads 
thus: "And thither shall ye bring your burnt offerings, 
and your tithes, and the heave-offerings of your hand, and 
your vo'Ws, and yonr freewill offerings, and the firstlings 
of your herd and your flock, and there shall ye eat before 
Jehovah your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your 
hand unto, ye and your ho^useholds, wherein Jehovah thy God 
hath blessed thee'' (xii. 6, 7). Here they are told to eat, but 
they are not told which they shall eat of the various offerings 
mentioned. We know, however, from other legislation, that 
they were not to eat of the burnt offerings, which were totally 
consumed on the altar. They were not to eat of the heave- 
offering, which was to be consumed by the priest and his 
family; and, if the law in lumbers had been already given, 
they were not to eat of the firstlings. But other legislation 
gave them the right to eat of the tithes, of the freewill offer- 
ings, and of the offerings in fulfillment of vows. When, then, 
they were told to bring all these offerings to the place that 
God wonld choose, and to eat there, they were necessarily 
restricted in their eating to these three classes of offerings, the 
others having been forbidden. There is no authority here for 
eating of the firstlings. 

The second passage is the seventeenth verse of the same 
chapter. Having directed the people in the sixth verse to take 
all their offerings, of every kind, to the place which God would 
appoint, he here repeats, in reference to some of them, the 
same instruction in a negative form. He says : "Thou mayest 
not eat within thy gates the tithe of thy corn, or of thy vine, 
or of thine oil, or the firstlings of thy herd or thy flock, nor 
any of the vows which thou voi^^^st, nor thy freewill offerings, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 103 

nor the heave-oifering of thy hand: but thou shalt eat them 
befors Jehovah thy God in the place which Jehovah thy God 
shall choose," etc. These are the offerings which they would 
be most tempted to partake of at their homes; and this 
accounts for the repetition. It seems from this that, while 
not commanded to eat of the firstlings, they were permitted to 
do sa The case, then, is like that of the tithes, which though 
given to the Levites, the giver was permitted to have one feast 
from them with the Levites, at the time of delivering them to 
the latter. This provision is not contradictory to the one that 
gave the firstlings to the priests, but an addition to it by which 
the offerer was permitted to have one feast with the priests 
who received them. In this case also, as in that of the tithes, 
the firstlings would furnish a much greater quantity of flesh 
than the man and his family could consume if they alone ato 
of it. If the offerer, for instance, had one hundred sheep and 
twenty cows, he would be likely to have born every year 
twenty or more male lambs that would be the firstborn 
of their mothers, and a half-dozen calves tJiat ^\'erre the 
firstborn of his heifers. If his flocks and herds were numer- 
ous, he would be certain to have many more tban thase. 
His family and a half-dozen priests could make a bountiful 
repast on one lamb and one calf, and the rest would be a very 
liberal perquisite for the priests. 

In the third passage cited (xv. 19) the firstlings are men- 
tioned again for the special purpose of forbidding the owner 
to make any profit from them of any kind : "All the firstling 
males that are born of thy herd and of thy flock tbou shalt 
sanctify unto Jehovah thy God: thou shalt do no work with 
the firstling of thine ox, nor shear the firstling of thy flock. 
Thou shalt eat it before Jehovah tliy God year by year in the 
place which Jehovah shall choose, thou and thy household.'' 
Here the eating must be understood as in the passage 
last cited. 

Before dismissing this objection, it may be well to remark 
that if a critic, before considering the passages involved, had 
already reached the settled conclusion that Deuteronomy was 



104 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

written first, and tJie Book of ^sTumbeTS two ceoituries later, 
that both were written by ■uninspired men, and that the later 
writer was not at all concerned whether his record should agree 
or not with the older document, he would almost necessarily 
see a conflict between these provisions about the firstlings. 
On the other hand, if the critic accepts the account which these 
books give of their own origin and mutual relations, and there- 
fore sees in Numbers the earlier legislation, and in Deuteron- 
omy an oratorical representation of the same, he would need 
only to exercise a moderate degree of common sense to see that 
there is no contradiction between them. The destructive 
critics have been blinded tO' obvious truths by having first 
accepted a false and destructive theory as to the origin of the 
several books. 

16. As to a Fragment of the Wilderness Itinerary. The 
last of the so-called contradictions between Deuteronomy and 
the middle books of the Pentateuch which appears worthy of 
notice is that between a fragment of itinerary in Deut. x. 6, 7, 
and the corresponding place in the full itinerary of !N^um. 
xxxiii. It is enough to say of this, that although Driver in his 
Commentary devotes two and a half pages to an attempt to 
make something out of it prejudicial to the histoTy (118-121), 
he finally unites with Wellhausen, Reuss, Cornill and Dillman 
in the conclusion that the passage in Deuteronomy on which 
the objection is based is an interpolation. He says: "All 
things considered, it seems, however, likely that x. 6, 7 is 
not a part of the original text of Deuteronomy; if this be 
the case, Deuteronomy will be relieved of the contradiction 
with 'Nwoa.. xxxiii. 31-33, though the contradiction will still 
attach to the source from which the notice is derived, and bear 
witness to the existence of divergent traditions in our present 
Pentateuch" (xxxvi. ; cf. 118, 121). The correctness of this 
judgment can be verified by any intelligent reader if he will 
read verses 6-9, marked as a parenthesis in O'ur English version, 
in connection with the verse preceding and that following. He 
will see that the parenthesis makes a break in the connectiom 
of thought and in the chronology, which renders it incredible 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 105 

that it was uttered by Moses. When such unbelievers as Well- 
hausen, Reuss and Cornill had admitted this, it is very strange 
that Driver, who claims to be an evangelical critic, while also 
admitting it, should make a show of argument on the passage 
contrary to his own admission. And stranger still is his closr 
ing remark in the extract just made from him, that "the con- 
tradiction will still attach to the source from which the notice 
is derived, and bear witness to the existence of divergent tra- 
ditions in our present Pentateuch.'^ Suppose that the con- 
tradiction does attach to the source of the interpolated passage ; 
does this have any bearing on the authorship of the book? 
Driver knows that it does not. And why say that a false state- 
ment interpolated in the book "bears witness to the existence 
of divergent traditions in our present Pentateuch,'' when, 
according to his own admission, it bears witness only to the 
existence of one or more interpolations so bunglingly made as 
to be promptly recognized as such? It is difficult to believe 
that the remark has any other aim than to leave the mind of 
the reader impressed unfavorably toward the real Deoiteron- 
omy. It is a Parthian arrow, shot backward in the retreat 
from an attack which the warrior is not willing to acknowl- 
edge as a failure. 

All the alleged contradictions on which the destructive 
theory of Deuteronomy is based, at least all on which a final 
decision depends, have now passed in review before the reader. 
All have been expressed in the words of one or more of the 
ablest advocates of that theory, and in not a single instance has 
the allegation been sustained. In every instance it has 
appeared that fair dealing with the text, competent knowledge 
of its details, and the exercise of soiund common sense, relieve 
it from aill inconsistency with the books which precede it in 
our printed Bibles, and which have always preceded it in the 
Hebrew manuscript copies. Nothing has been found to show 
that Moses could not have been the author of all of them. Such 
we believe will be the verdict of every person of unprejudiced 
mind, who will studiously read what has been said of these 
sixteen specifications. 



106 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

§6. Inteenal Evidence foe the Late Date. 

1. From the Expression, ^'Beyond Jordan." The first 
verse of the Book of Deuteronomy corresponds to the modem 
title-page of a book. It reads: "These be the words which 
Moses spake unto all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness, 
in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran, and Tophel, 
and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab." It announces the 
authorship of what follows, and represents it as having been 
delivered orally; and it fixes with precision the locality in 
which the speaking was done. It was done "beyond Jordan," 
"in the wilderness," "in the Arabah," the Hebrew name for 
the Jordan valley; and "between" certain places then well 
known, but now unknown. In the fifth verse, which is more 
immediately introductory to the speech that follows, the local- 
ity is again fixed by the remark, "Beyond Jordan in the land 
of Moab began Moses to declare this law." These remarks are 
held by the adverse critics as equivalent to an assertion that 
Moses did not write the book. Moses is definitely located "in 
the land of Moab," which was certainly east of the Jordan, and 
as the author styles this "beyond Jordan," he locates himseif 
west of the Jordan, and thereby distinguishes himself from 
Moses, seeing that Moses never crossed the river, ^ot only so, 
but no Israelite crossed the river till after the death of Moses, 
consequently no Israelite wrote the book while Moses was 
living. It must have been written after the death of Moses, 
and how long after is to be determined by other sources of 
information. Professor Driver expresses the argument in the 
following form: 

The use of the phrase "beyond Jordan" for the country east of 
Jordan, in Deut. i. 1; v. 3-8; iv. 41, 46, 47, 49 (as elsewhere in the 
Pentateuch: comp. Num. xxii. 1; xxxiv. 15), exactly as in Josh. ii. 10; 
vii. 7; ix. 10, etc.; Judg. v. 17; x. 8, shows that the author was a resi- 
dent of western Palestine {Int., xlii. f.). 

It is true that in these selected passages the phrase is 
used for the country east of the Jordan ; but the professor has 
made a selection to suit his argument, and as an exhibition of 
the meaning of the original phrase it is misleading. A com- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 107 

plete induction would have showed that it is used for both 
sides of the Jordan. In Deut. xi. 30 Moses says of the moun- 
tains Gerizim and Ebal: "Are they not ^beyond Jordan' by 
the way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaan- 
ites?" In Xumbers, while the phrase is used in xxii. 1 
and xxxiv. 15 for the country east of the river, as stated by 
Dri\«er, it is used in xxxii. 19 for that west of the river; 
for the two and a half tribes say: "We will not inherit with 
them beyond Jordan, or forward; because our inheritance is 
fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward." 

Again, while the passages cited by Driver from Joshua and 
Judges are correctly represented, there are others in the same 
books which have the opposite reference. For example, in 
Josh. V. 1 and ix. 1 the tribes and kings in western Palestine 
are said to be "beyond Jordan," and in Judg. vii. 25 the heads 
of Oreb and Zeeb are brought to Gideon "beyond Jordan" 
while Gideon was yet on the western side of the river (comp. 
viii. 4). 

But the decisive fact is, that the phrase in question is 
frequently used for the side of the river on which the speaker 
or writer stood, and that therefore the original preposition 
did not have the meaning and force of our English word "be- 
yond." The first example is in ^um. xxxii. 19, already 
quoted. The two and a half tribes say: "We will not inherit 
with them ^beyond Jordan' forward; because our inheritance 
is fallen to us ^beyond Jordan' eastward." Here "beyond" 
in the latter clause represents the same preposition (eher) in 
the original as in the former clause, and it should be transr 
lated by the same word in English. Of the translation we 
shall have something to say further on. Each srde of the 
river is here called ^H^eyond Jordan," and the two are dis- 
tinguished by adding "forward" to one, and "eastward" to 
the other. In Deut iii. 8 Moses, standing east of the Jor- 
dan, says: "We took at that time out of the hand of the two 
kings of the Amorites the land that was ^beyond Jordan' from 
the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon;" but the land was 
on the same side \\'ith the speaker. The Book of Joshua was 



108 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

certainly written west of the Jordan, yet tlie writer, in his 
two remarks already quoted (v. 1; ix. 1), speaks of the tribes 
of Canaan and the kings of Canaan as being ^^beyond Jor- 
dan." The same is true of the author of Judges, who speaks 
of Grideon as being ^^beyond Jordan," when he was on the 
same side with the writer (viii. 4). This usage continues 
even into the latest books of the Old Testament. In II. 
Kings iv. 24 Solomon is said to have dominion over all the re- 
gion "beyond the river," though all were on the same side of 
the river with the writer. In Ezra viii. 36 the writer speaks 
of "the governors beyond the river," meaning those on the 
same side with himself; and in I. Chron. xxvi. 30 the A\Titer, 
who was undoubtedly in Palestine, spoaks of men who were 
"beyond Jordan westward." These examples demonstrate 
that the Hebrew preposition (eher) translated "beyond," does 
not, by its own force, locate its object on the opposite side 
from him who uses it. They demonstrate that the opening 
words of Deuteronomy, "These be the words which Moses 
spake to all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness," may 
have been written by Moses as certainly as by any other wri- 
ter, and that the argument based upon them is worthless. 

Andrew Harper's presentation of the argument under dis- 
cussion has some marks of originality, and it must not be 
passed by. He says: 

Wherever the expression "beyond Jordan" is used in the portions 
where the author speaks for himself, it signifies the land of Moab (cf. 
Deut. i. 1, 5; iv. 41, 46, 47, 49). Wherever, on the contrary, Moses is 
introduced speaking in the first person, "beyond Jordan" denotes the 
land of Israel (iii. 20, 25; xi. 30). The only exception is iii. 8, where, 
at the beginning of a long archaeological note, which can not originally 
have formed part of the speech of Moses, and consequently must be a 
comment of the writer, or of a later editor of Deuteronomy, "beyond 
Jordan" signifies the land of Moab. If, consequently, the book be 
taken at its word, there can be no doubt that it professes to be an 
account of what Moses did in the land of Moab, before his death, 
written by another person who lived west of the Jordan (Com., 4, 5). 

E'otwithstanding the extreme confidenoe with which Mr. 
Harper here speaks, claiming that there is no doubt of his con- 
clusion, the premises from which he argues are baseless as- 
sumptions; fot we have already seen that the expression "be- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. lO^ 

yond Jordan" does not by its own force locate either the speaker 

or tlie 2)€i*son spoken of, and so his first set of references are 

void of the significance which he attaches to them; and as to 

the use of the phrase in iii. 8, this verse is not the beginning of 

the archaeological note which he rightly regards as a commeoit 

by a later hand. This note, as any one can see at a glance, 

begins not at verse 8, but at verse 11. 

Professor Driver, though not so positive in his tone as Mr, 

Harper, is very persistent in maintaining the force of this 

phrase in the opening verses of Deuteronomy; and well he 

might be, for on it, and it alone, depends the constant assertion 

of his class of critics that this book does not profess to have 

come from the hand of Moses. He says on the same page 

quoted above: 

Its employment by a writer, whether in East or West Palestine 
of the side on which he himself stood, is difficult to understand, unless 
the habit had arisen of viewing the regions on the two sides of Jordan 
as contrasted with each other, and this of itself implies residence in 
Palestine (Com., xliii.). 

Here the professor betrays the fact, which he nowhere els© 
openly sets foTtli, that the phrase is used of the side on which 
the writer stood ; and this fact, I must insist again, nullifies 
completely the argument that is based on the expression. But, 
passing from this point in the extract, how does the fact that 
the habit of viewing the regions on the two sides of Jordan as 
contrasted with each other, imply residence in Palestine ? Does 
a man have to reside in a country in o-rder to view the regions 
on the two sides of a river in that country as contrasted with 
each other ? Does a man have to reside in the United States in 
order to view the two regions on the two sides of the Mississippi 
as contrasted with each other ? Does not every man who has 
ever seen a river, know that it has two sides, and that the two 
sides are contrasted with each other, so that if one is the west 
side, the other is the east, or if one is the northern, the other 
is the southern ? And did not the Israelites, from the time 
they first heard of the Jordan, know this much about it ? And 
when at last they were encamped on one side of it, close to it^ 
bank, where Moses is said to have spoken the contents of this 



110 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Book of Deuteronomy, could they not see the contrast between 
this and the other side which was their promised land ? To 
ask these questions is to answer them, and to show that in 
making this argument the learned professor did not see an inch 
before his face. 

The confusion apparent in these arguments of the critics 
has arisen from an improper use of the English preposition 
^'beyond.'' It is impossible that a Hebrew preposition whose 
object is sometimes located on the same side of the river with 
the person who uses it, can be uniformly translated "beyond/* 
Yet this is what the revisers of our English version have 
attempted. They attempted it, but were compelled in a few 
instances to vary their rendering in order tO' avoid misstating 
the facts. Eor example, in I. Kings iv. 24, where it is said 
of Solomon that "he had dominion over all the region on this 
side of the river, from Tiphsah to Gaza, even over all the kings 
on this side the river,'' had they rendered the word "beyond" 
instead of "on this side," in both clauses, they would have had 
Solomon reigning over the region and the kings north of the 
Euphrates. Again, had they clung to their chosen rendering 
in N^um. xxxii. 19, they would have made the Reubenites say, 
"We will not inherit with them beyond Jordan forward; be- 
cause our inheritance is fallen to us beyond Jordan eastward ;" 
thus locating the speakers on both sides of the river at one 
time. Yet again, in I. Sam. xiv. 4, where the writer speaks 
of the two crags that were between the camp of Saul and 
that of the Philistines, they would have said, "There was a 
rocky crag beyond, and a rocky crag beyond," instead of say- 
ing, "on this side" and "on the other side." In all of these 
instances they were compelled to follow the version which they 
were revising. 

The revisers have in some instances, where they adhere to 
the rendering "beyond," committed the very mistake which in 
the three last cited they avoided by following the old version. 
For example, they make Moses say in Deut^ iii. 8, "We took at 
that time out of the hands of the two kings of the Amorites the 
land that was beyond Jordan from the river Arnon to mount 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. Ill 

Ilermon/' though the land mentioned was not beyond Jordan, 
but on the same side with Moses. They make Joshua say to 
the two and a half tribes before they crossed the river, ''Your 
waives, your little ones and your cattle shall remain in the land 
which Moses gave you beyond JoTdan," when it was not beyond, 
but on the same side of the river with themselves ; and they 
make the author of the Book of Joshua, who unquestionably 
wrote in the country west of the river, speak of ''all the kings 
which were beyond Jordan westward." They were not beyond 
Jordan, but on the same side with himself. 

King James' translators recognized th,e ambiguity of this 
Hebrew preposition, and wdsely attempted no uniformity in its 
rendering. They ascertained as best they could from the con- 
text, the only source of information in case of ambiguous w^ords, 
on which side of the river the speaker or writer stood, and 
translated accoa'diufflv. Thev render it on this side, on the 
other side, or beyond, as the context requires, and in no instance 
have they made their renderings contradict the facts. The 
critics could have learned from the very translation w^hich some 
of them helped to revise, if not from their own knowledge of 
Hebrew, that they were committing an error. This translation 
has the opening sentence of Deuteronomy rendered, "These be 
the words w^hich Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan 
in the wilderness" (verse 1), and, "On this side Jordan in the 
land of ^Foab" (verse 5) ; and thus it locates the writei* of the 
book on the same side of the river wath Moses. This is cer- 
tainly correct if either Moses or one of his contempo'raries wrote 
this preface. It is only after reaching the conclusion in some 
other way that some one w^est of the river w^rote it, that any 
scholar could think of rendering the preposition "beyond." As 
this rendering was suggested by this preconception, it can not 
furnish e\ddence that the preconception is correct. One might 
as well attempt to make the roof of the house f^upport the foun- 
dation. The argument, then, by which critics attempt to make 
the Book of Deuteronomy claim for itself an author who lived 
west of the Jordan and after the death of Moses, is a fallacy 
unworthy of modern scholarship. 



112 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

2. Passages Implying Dates Long AfteT the Events. 
Professor Driver says: 

There are passages in Deuteronomy showing that the author lived 
at a distance from the period which he describes. Thus, if i. 3 
(eleventh month) be compared with Num. xxxiii. 38 (fifth month), 
which fixes the date of Num. xx. 22-28, it appears that the whole of 
the events reviewed in ii. 2 to iii. 29 had taken place during the six 
months preceding the time when, if Moses be the author, the dis- 
course must have been delivered. In such a situation, however, the 
repeated ''at that time'' (ii. 34; iii. 4, 8, 12, 18, 21, 23), as also "unto 
this day"' in iii. 14, though suitable when a longer period had elapsed, 
appears inappropriate. Chaps, v. 3 and xi. 2-7 point in the same 
direction (Com., xliii.). 

In this argument the expression "at that time" is pressed 
into a service which is contrary to its nature. It does not, and 
it can not, of itself, show that the interval which it implies is 
either a long one or a short one. The interval, whether long 
or short, is to be ascertained from the context, and not from 
this expression. I may say. Yesterday at sunset the sky was 
clear, and no one at that time expected foul weather to-day ; or 
I may say, Just one year ago to-day our country was engaged 
in war, and at that time no one expected the peaceful times 
that we now enjoy. Admiral Dewey might have said in his 
report of the battle of Manila, I entered the bay at night, and 
at that time I knew not at what moment my ship might be 
blown up by hidden torpedoes'. Thousands of instances of 
such use of the expression might be adduced. Why should it 
be thought, then, that this expression, when used by Moses, or 
when put into his mouth by another, must mean a longer period 
than six months in the past? In the passages cited, Moses 
says, or is made to say, of Sihon : "We smote him and his sons, 
and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time." 
At what time? At the time when we smote him. This was 
done probably less than three months previous. If that was 
not long enough for the expression "at that time," what should 
Moses have said ? Let the critic tell us. In the next passage 
Moses speaks of Og, and says : "We smote him until there was 
nothing left to him remaining. And we took all his cities at 
that time." Ought he to have said, "at this time" ? In the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 113 

next, referring to the same two conquests, Moses says: ''We 
took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of 
the Amorites." The next is a repetition of the same thought, 
and the next is the statement : "I commanded you at that time, 
saying, Jehovah your God hath given you this land to possess 
it." Finally he tells the people: ''At that time I besought 
Jehovah to let me go over into the promised land." 

This argument is so ill conceived, and even puerile, that 
I would be ashamed to spend time on it were it not that it has 
been handed down in a traditionary way from critical father 
to critical son, as though it were a rich inheritance. -"^^ In 
Driver's book its nakedness is covered up by referring to the 
passages with Arabic figures and avoiding the quotation of a 
single one. 

Driver's second argument on the same passage is this : 

The writer, though aware of the fact of the forty years' wander- 
ings (viii. 2, 4), does not appear to realize fully the length of the 
interval, and identifies those whom he addresses with the generation 
that came out of Egypt in a manner which betrays that he is not 
speaking as a contemporary. 

Yes; he does thus address them. He says, "Thou shalt 
remember all the way w^hich Jehovah thy God led thee these 
forty years in the wilderness," etc. And why should he not? 
It is true that all of those who were over twenty years of age 
when they crossed the Red Sea had died, but all, or nearly all, 
who were twenty years old or under when they crossed the sea 
were alive, and could remember every incident of the forty 
years. They were between forty and sixty years of a2;e. The 
rest had been born during the forty years, some in one year and 
some in another, down to the youngest person standing there 
to hear ; and the boys and girls only ten years of age had heard 
the whole story told by their elders a thousand times. Who 
is it that betrays himself here, the writer of the book, or the 
critic who invented, and the others who have blindly accepted 
this blundering criticism ? 

The third argument is expressed in these lines : 

^=Comp. Robertson Smith, 0. T., 326; Addis, Doc. of Hex., xv.f. 



114 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

In ii. 12 ("As Israel did unto the land of his possession") there 
is an evident anachronism; however, some writers have treated the 
antiquarian notices in ii. 10-12, 20-23 (though otherwise in the style 
of Deuteronomy, and similar to iii. 9, 11, 13; xi. 30) as glosses. 

Here the professor was about to put his feet on thin ice, 
but he drew back in time. Of course, these antiquarian notices 
are glosses, as any one can see who will observe how rudely 
every one of them breaks the close connection of thought in the 
words preceding and following it. At the beginning of every 
one of them the speaker's voice is suspended, and another 
person speaks through the parenthesis. Whether Moses is the 
speaker, or the hypothetical Deuteronomist, as these paren- 
theses are by a diiferent hand, they can furnish no evidence 
against the Mosaic authorship. Yet they do furnish evidence 
unfavorable to the date of Deuteronomy assumed by these 
critics. For after the days of Josiah, and in the absence of 
all historic documents earlier than the eighth century, what 
living Israelite knew anything, or could know anything, about 
the Emim, the Horites, the Zamzummim, the Awim, and 
others whose movements are mentioned in those notes? And 
if he did, what imaginable motive could he have had for inter- 
polating these statements about them in the supposed speech of 
Moses ? There is no answer to these questions. On the other 
hand, if Moses actually made these speeches, there were men 
living at the time, and for a generation e^ two after the time, 
who may have had possession of these facts., and who through 
an antiquarian interest may have made the interpolations. 
Whatever bearing these notes have, then, on the ques-tion of 
authorship, it is decidedly, if not conclusively, in favor of 
Moses. 

Driver's fourth argument, on the same page, is no more 
satisfactory than either of the preceding: 

The expression, "When ye came forth out of Egypt," not merely 
in xxiv. 9; xxv. 17, but also in xxv. 5 (cf. 4), of an incident quite at 
the end of the forty years' wanderings (cf. iv. 45, 46), could not have 
been used naturally by Moses, speaking less than six months after- 
wards, but testifies to a writer of a later age, in which the forty years 
had dwindled to a point. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 115 

If this is true, tlieii tlie Deuterooiomist, with all liis skill in 
simulating Moses, either betrayed himself at this point, 
or tliought, contrary to Professor Driver, that these words were 
natural imder the circumstances. We can judge whether he 
or his critics are correct, only by taking the expression in its 
connections. First, then, "Remember what Jehovah thy God 
did to Miriam by the way as ye came forth out of Egypt." 
Was it unnatural, at the close of the forty years, for Moses to 
say this? Did not the leprosy of Miriam occur "by the way 
as they came forth out of Egypt" ? Second, "Remember what 
Amalek did unto thee by the way as ye came forth out of 
Egypt." Is tbei*e anything unnatural in this? Did not 
Amalek do this by the w^ay? Third, the Ammonites 
and Moabites are censured, "because they met you not 
with bread and w^ater in the way when ye came forth out of 
Egypt" Does this use of the expression differ from the otheTs ? 
In all these instances the words, "as ye came forth out of 
Eg}'pt," or "when ye came forth out of Egypt," are evidently 
used, not of the moment when they crossed the Red Sea, but 
of their whole journey from Egypt to the plain of Moab, where 
Moses was speaking; and any event which had transpired, 
whether at the beginning or near the end, is properly referred 
to in this way. It is like a child fishing in a wash-tub, to 
search in these passages for evidence against the Mosaic author- 
ship of these speeches. 

3. Evidence from Differences between the Laws of Exodus 
and Deuteronomy. It is argued that the differences behveen 
certain laws in Deuteronomy and those in Exodus show^ that 
the former w^ere given in a later age than the latter, and when 
the latter had ceased to be "adequate to the nation's needs." 
Driver gives six specifications under this head which we shall 
notice : 

(1) The first is the law^ of the kingdom, as it is styled, in 
Deut. xvii. 14-20, w^hich, he says, "is colored by reminiscences 
of the monarchy of Solomon." "The argument," he continues 
to say, "does not deny that Moses may have made pro'vision for 
the establishment of a monarchy in Israel, but affirms that the 



IIG THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

form in which the provisio'ii is here cast bears tlie stamp of a 
kter age" (Com., xlvi.).^^ 

If, as is here alleged, this law is colored by reminiscences of 
the monarchy of Solomon, there is no need of further evidence 
that it was not given by Moses ; but if, instead of being colored 
by reminiscences, it is colored by anticipation of such a mon- 
archy, the argumeoit is reversed. If, in other words., the 
expressions containing the supposed allusion to Solomon may 
have been used by a man of wise human foresight, they contain 
no evidence against the Mosaic author-ship. We can judge of 
this only by placing the expressions in print before us, and 
carefully considering their force. The first provision of the 
law has reference to the nationality of the king: '^When thou 
art come into the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, and 
shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will 
set a king over me, like as all the nations that are round about 
me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom 
Jehovah thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren 
shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not put a foreigner 
over thee, who is not thy brother." 

What was to prevent Moses from anticipating all this ? He 
was starting his people on their national career without a king, 
when all the nations round about them had kings, and had been 
ruled by them in all the past. He would have been grossly 
ignorant of human nature had he not anticipated and feared 
that in the course of time they would grow weary of such sin- 
gularity, and want to be like other nations. Such has been 
the fearful anticipation of every body of patriots who' have ever 
organized a democratic or republican form of government. 
And as to the nationality of the king, inasmuch as Israel had 
].io man of royal blood, how prone they would be, when the 
royal fever should seize them, to offer the throne to some foreign 
prince. Even modem Greece was induced by this considera- 



" Driver here follows Kuenen, who says: "The warnings against 
trade with Egypt, polygamy and great riches, are borrowed from the 
traditions concerning the wise king, and are directed against the errors 
into which he fell" (Reh of Israel, II. 33 f.). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 117 

tion, when she became a kingdom, to import a sprig of royalty 
from Denmark. Thus far, then, everything in the law accoixis 
with a Mosaic origin. On the other hand, if Deuteronomy was 
first published in the reign of Josiah, wlieoi Israel had been 
ruled by a line of kings for mo^re than four hundred years, and 
the people of Judah had become so wedded to the house of 
David as to abhor the thought of submitting to any other sover- 
eign, what could have been the motive for writing such a law 
as this ? It would be as if the British Parliament should at 
its present session pass a law that when, hereaftCT, a monarch 
of the empire shall be crowned, he shall not be a Frenchman. 

The next provision of the law is this: ^^Only he shall not 
multiply horse-s to himself, nor cause the people to return to 
Egypt to the end that he should multiply horses ; forasmuch 
as Jehovah hath said to you. Ye shall henceforth return no moTe 
that w^ay." What is there here that Moses may not have antic- 
ipated ? He had left a land which was famous for its chariots 
and horsemen, and how could he avoid fearing that his people 
might some day imitate Egypt in this particular, and thus 
become a military instead of an agricultural people ? And 
he knew perfectly well that if they or their possible king should 
be fired with this kind of ambition, many of them would be 
dra^vn back into Egypt by the traffic in horses, and would thus 
be brought once more under the idolatrous infiuences of that 
heathen land. On the other hand, why should this warning be 
given to the Israel of Josiah's reign, when the thought of multi- 
plying horses had never entered the mind of a Hebrew monarch 
since the days of Solomon ? The people remembered too well 
the oppressive burdens of Solomon's reign, entailed partly by 
his attempt to build up an army of chariots and horsemen, a 
burden which caused the revolt of the ten tribes, to need any 
warning against it at so late a day as Josiah's reign. It is 
true, as some critics have said in ansAver to this objection, that 
the prophets had rebuked some of the kings of Judah for 
trusting in horses rather than in Jehovah, but it was when thev 
were trusting in help from the cavalr)^ of Egypt, and not that 



il8 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

they had, or desired to have, cavalry of their own. (See Isa. 
xxxi. 1 ; xxxvi. 9.) 

The next provision is this: "Neither shall he multiply 
wives, that his heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly 
multiply to himself silver and gold/' Rameses II., from whom 
Moses fled into the land of Midian, and who died while he was 
there, left an inscription in which he declares that he had sixty- 
nine daughters and seventy sons ; and, of course, he had multi- 
plied wives unto himself. Moses would have heen hlind not 
to have seen the evils of his course, and not to have wished to 
guard any future king of his own people against this great 
folly. But a writer in the days of Josiah, when the kings of 
Judah, warned by Solomon's bad example in violating this law, 
had abstained from, this vice through many generations, it would 
have been idle and preposterous to formally originate such 
a law. As to multiplying silver and gold, there' was even less 
danger of this in the poverty-stricken condition of Judah under 
Josiah; while in the days of Moses the gracious promises of 
God and the bright hopes of Israel for temporal prosperity, 
and even the promise that Israel should lend to the nations, 
and borrow from none, made it exceedingly probable that the 
multiplication of silver and gold, with all its corrupting effects, 
would be one of the future dangers to both king and people. 

Respecting the last provision of this law, that the king 
should have a copy of it, and that he should be governed by it 
in all of his personal as well as his official conduct, there is no 
jjret-ense that it is inappropriate to the time of Moses. We 
leave the topic, then, with the fullest assurance that the evidence 
in the case is altogether in favor of the Mosaic origin of this 
statute. 

Driver, however, supplements his argument from, the form 

of the law by an appeal to the facts connected with the first 

appointment of a king by Samuel. He argues thus: 

Had this law been known in fact, either to Samuel, or to the 
people who demanded of him a king, it is incredible either that Samuel 
should have resisted the application of the people as he is represented 
as doing, or that the people should not have appealed to the law as 
a sufficient justification of their request (Com., 213). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. ii9 

Whether this is true or not, dei>ends on the fonn of the 
law. If the law gave the people the privilege of making a king 
at any time thev might choose to do so, they would undoubt- 
edly have appealed to it against Samuel's remonstrance. But 
this it did not do. It said: ^When thou slialt say, I will set 
a king over me, like all the nations that are round me, thou 
shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom Jehovah thy 
God shall choose." These words express the anticipation that 
they would make a king, but they express neither approval nor 
disapproval of the act. Whether it would be sinful or not, 
was to depend on circumstances at the time. Samuel resisted 
the application of the people, first of all, because it w^as setting 
him aside as their judge, although when called upon for an 
expression they declared that there had been no fault in his 
administration (I. Sam. viii. 6-8) ; and secondly, because they 
were rejecting God from reigning o<ver them; and this last 
thought he enforced by reciting the facts in their past history 
Avhich showed that in every time of oppression by their enemies 
God had raised up competent leaders to deliver them (xiii. 
6-12). This made it sinful, because it was ungrateful. In 
the third place, Samuel's resis-tance was based on the foreseen 
evils which the people would bring upon themselves by this 
change, ^o nation of antiquity had enjoyed so inexpensive a 
form of government as they, and none had been so free from 
the exactions of tyrants. The evils of the choice upon which 
they were now so intent, were fully pointed out to them (viii. 
8-18), and it was on account of the plunge they were about to 
make into a sea of remediless miseries, that he vehemently 
exhorted them to desist. Driver's argument, then, is based on 
a misconception of the form of the law, and a still greater 
misconception of the grounds on which Samuel urged his 
remonstrance. It furnishes no evidence in favor of a late 
origin of the law. 

(2) Driver's second specification is the following: 

The terms of Deut. xvii. 8-13 (cf. xix. 17), in which the constitu- 
tion of the supreme tribunal is not prescribed, but represented as 
already known, appear to presuppose the existence of the judicature 
instituted (according to II. Chron. xix. 8-11) by Jehoshaphat. 



120 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

111 the first of these references the supreme tribunal is 
prescribed: it is not represented as already known; but all 
that is said of it looks to the future. The introductory words 
are these: ^^If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judg- 
ment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and 
between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within 
thy gates : then shalt thou arise, and get thee to the place which 
Jehovah thy God shall choose ; and thou shalt come to the priests 
the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days: and 
thou shalt inquire ; and they shall show thee the sentence of judg- 
ment," etc. In these words a supreme tribunal is formally 
constituted; it is to consist of the priests who' shall be at the 
central sanctuary, and "the ju"dge that shall be in those days.'' 
Who that judge was to be is not prescribed, but the later history 
shows that he was to be one of those rulers called judges who 
were raised up by Jehovah from time to time until the mon- 
archy was established, and after that, the monarch himself. 
The second passage (xix. 17) is supplementary to the preceding, 
and prescribes the penalty for perjury: "If an unrighteous 
witness rise up against any man to testify against him of wrong 
doing; then both the men between whom the controversy is, 
shall stand before the priests and the judges that shall be in 
those days; and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: 
and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified 
falsely against his brother, then shall ye do untO' him as he had 
thought to do unto his brother.'' Here, again, provision is 
made for the proceedings in a tribunal "that shall be in those 
days" and not in one already known. Finally, the work done by 
Jehoshaphat (II. Chron. xix. 11), in which he established pre- 
cisely this kind of judiciary in Judah, instead of being the 
original inauguration of it, was a rene^val of it after it had 
fallen into neglect; for that proceeding is formally introduced 
by the words, "And Jehoshaphat dwelt at Jerusalem: and he 
w^ent out again among the people, from Beersheba to the hill 
country of Ephraim, and brought them back to^ Jehovah, the 
God of their fathers." Then follows the account of setting up 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 121 

judges in every city, and giving them needed instruction. The 
absence of this judicature had been a departure from Jehovah; 
the re-establishment of it was a return to Jehovah. 

Thus the very passages relied upon to prove a late date for 
this legislation, proves the reverse — so grossly has the perverted 
vision of the critics distorted the sacred text. It is worthy 
of notice, here, that, notwithstanding the discredit which our 
critics attach to Chronicles, they are not ashamed to appeal to 
it when they think it speaks to suit th'em. 

(3) Driver next specifies the prohibition in Deuteronomy 
of the worship of the ''host of heaven." He says : 

The forms of idolatry alluded to, especially the worship of the 
"host of heaven" (iv. 19; vii. 3), point to a date not earlier than the 
second half of the eighth century B. C. It is true the worship of the 
sun and moon is ancient, as is attested even by the names of places in 
Canaan; but in the notices (which are frequent) of idolatrous prac- 
tices in the historical books from Judges to Kings, no mention of the 
"host of heaven" occurs till the reign of Ahaz; and in the seventh 
century it is alluded to frequently. 

This argumetnt is frivolous. It assumes that the prohibi- 
tion of a certain sin must be of later date than the commission 
of it. And this, too, when it is admitted that the sin in ques- 
tion was an ancient one, certainly more ancient than Moses. 
It was practiced by the Egyptians from whom Moses had deliv- 
ered his people. If it was not practiced in Israel till the time 
of Ahaz, this may be accounted for by the very fact that it had 
been so plainly prohibited by name in the law of Moses. It 
would be just as reasonable t-o argue that the prohibition against 
devoting children to Molech (Lev. xviii. 21) was not known 
imtil the time of Ahaz, because he was the first king of Israel to 
practice it (II. Kings xvi. 3). Moses had personal knowledge 
of both these forms of idolatry, and he had good reason to pro- 
hibit both by name. 

(4) In his next specification Driver completely ignores the 
element of divine inspiration, as he does in all the others in a 
less degree. He follows Dillman in saying: '^The style of 
Deutei'onomy, in its rhetorical fullness and breadth of diction, 
implies a long development of the art of public oratory, and is 



122 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

not of a character to belong to the first age of Hebrew litera- 
ture." If Moses spoke by inspiration of God, this is an idle 
remark; and no man could make it seriously who regarded 
the speaker as being moved by the Holy Spirit. It is there- 
fore a rationalistic argument which he and Dillman, from 
whom he copies it, ha,v6 adopted from unbelieving critics. 
But, apart from this, the argument ignores a perfectly natural 
source from which this "public oratory'' may have been 
acquired. If Moses lived in the first period of Egyptian liter- 
ature, and was instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians, 
a man mighty in word and deed, he was able to use the Hebrew 
tongue with all the excellencies of oratory which had been 
developed in the Egyptian. On the other hand, what evidence 
Lave we that such a development of oratory existed in the 
period from Manasseh to Josiah, tliat we should locate these 
splendid orations in that inteirval ? On this point these critics 
are as silent as the grave. They claim that Jeremiah was influ- 
enced in his style by Deuteronomy ; but by whom was the writer 
.of Deuteronomy influenced? Not by Isaiah; for the critics 
earnestly deny any connection between the two. A man pos- 
sessed of such oratorical powers at that time, would be a far 
greateir intellectual marvel than the wildest imagination can 
suppose Moses to have been after enjoying the culture of th'b 
golden period of Egyptian literature. True, Moses said, when 
his commission was first given, "Lord, I am not eloquent. I 
am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue" (Ex. iv. 10) ; but that 
was after his sojourn of forty years as a shepherd in the wil- 
derness, and before his inspiration or his long experience in 
public speaking to the tribes of Israel. Under this specification, 
as under others that we have noticed, the argument stands 
reversed; and it is intrinsically more probable that the dis- 
courses in Deuteronomy came from the lips of Moses than from 
those of any man who lived in Israel after his time. 

(5) We next notice the argument that "the propheitic 
teaching of Deuteronomy, the dominant theological ideas, the 
points of view under which the laws are presented, the princi- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 123 

pies by which conduct is estimated, presuppose a relatively 
advanced stage of theological reflection, as they also approxi- 
mate to what is found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel." Here, again, 
the inspiration of the author is ignored, or, rather, it is assumed 
that there was none. The points of superiority mentioned 
are claimed as the result, not of divine enlightenment, but of 
"a relatively advanced stage of theological reflection." Once 
more we are in the footsteps of rationalism. And suppose that 
all this is true, I should like to know what Israelite in the days 
of Josiah or before was possessed of a "more advanced stage 
of theological reflection" than Moses, who communed with God 
through forty years of shepherd life into which he was thrown 
by his zeal for God, and then communed with the same God 
under the light of an increasing knowledge of his characteir for 
forty years more of active seTvioe as the ruler of God's chosen 
people ? Had he no time for "advanced theological reflection" ? 
Was his head a blockhead ? 

(6) The next specification under the present head is 
expressed in these words : 

The law in Deut. xviii. 20-22 presupposes an age in which the 
true prophets found themselves in conflict with numerous and influen- 
tial false prophets, and it became necessary to supply Israel with the 
means of distinguishing them; i.e., the period from the eighth cen- 
tury onward. 

The law referred to reads thus: "But the prophet, that 
shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which I have 
not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name 
of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if thou say 
in thine heart. How shall we know the word which Jehovah 
hath not spoken ? When a prophet speaketh in the name of 
Jehovah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the 
thing which Jehovah hath not spoken : the prophet hath spoken 
it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him." What 
is there in this law to shor\v that w^hen it was written, the true 
prophets found themselves in conflict ^vith numerous and influ- 
ential false prophets ? If plain words can mean anything, the 
law is predictive. There is no hint or ground for an infer- 
ence that the false prophets were alreiady in existence, but the 



124 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

very opposite. It is only tiiose who deny the occurrence of 
predictive prophecy v^ho can find in this law the presupposition 
of which Driver speaks. And to deny prophetic prediction is 
to deny every clause in this law; for not only is the law itself 
predictive, but the test of a false prophet which it prescribe'S is 
the fact that his predictions are not fulfilled. So essential 
is prediction to the existence of real prophetic powers, that a 
prophet must have uttered some prediction that has been ful- 
filled before he is to be credited as a prophet at all. This argu- 
ment is another example of tacitly denying the reality of inspi- 
ration. It is the argument of critics who deny the supernatural, 
though employed by some who claim to accept it. The 
weapons of this warfare, we continue to see, were forged by the 
enemies of the Bible. 

(7) We notice only one more of Driver's specifications. 
It is the law against the removal of landmarks: ''Thou shalt 
not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time 
have set in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit, in the 
land that Jehovah thy God giveth thee to possess it" (xix. 14). 

The argument of this law is a commonplace among the 
adverse critics, and by Driver it is stated as follows : 

The law, in its present wording, presupposes the occupation of 
Canaan by the Israelites, "they of old time" being evidently not the 
Canaanite predecessors of the Israelites, but the Israelitish ancestors 
of the present possessors (Com., 235). 

This statement contains two palpable contradictions of the 
law "in its present wording." The assertion that ''it pre^sup- 
poses the occupatiooa of Canaan by the Israelites" contradicts 
the words "in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit ;" and 
this designation of the inheritance by the future tense, contra- 
dicts the representatiom that the Israelites addressed are "the 
present possessors." "No grosser misstatement of "the law in 
its present wording" could well be made. The people are 
addressed as the future possessors of the land, and the clause 
"which they of old times have set up" may refer either to the 
landmarks which the Canaanites set up, and which would still 
mark the boundaries of many estates, or the landmarks which 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 125 

the Israelites would have set up. As Hebrew verbs have no 
future perfect tense, the past tense is used in the place of it in 
connection with future verbs in related clauses. This well- 
known grammatical peculiarity of the language should have 
guarded Hebrew scholars from the blunder involved in this 
argument. Translated with reference to it, the law was, ''Thou 
shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old 
time shall have set up." This would protect all landmarks, 
whether set up by Canaanites or Israelites. It was needful 
that the former as well as the latter be protected, not only 
because the former would sometimes mark the corners of lines 
of an Israelite's land, but also because the distance and direction 
of a new comer-stone from an old one of the Canaanites would 
often help to fix the position of the new one. It is an eveiry- 
day occurrence, where a section of country has been surveyed 
at different periods, for old landmarks to help in determining 
the location of now ones, and vice versa. This argument, then, 
though universally accepted as valid by destructive critics, came 
into existence and is propagated only by reversing the time ref- 
erence in the law. 

4. Evidence for Late Date of the Blessings and Curses, the 
Song of Moses, and his Blessing of the Tribes. These tJiree 
documents, occupying chapters xxviii.-xxxiii., are held to be of 
later date than the time of Moses, on the ground of internal 
evidence. 

(1) The predicted blessings and curses of chapter xxviii. 
Andrew Harper states the argument in the following paragraph : 

If any evidence were now needed that this chapter was written 
later than the Mosaic time, it might be found in the space given to 
the curses, and the much heavier emphasis laid upon them than upon 
the blessings. Not that Moses might not have prophetically foretold 
Israel's disregard of the warnings. But if the heights to which Israel 
was actually to rise had been before the author's mind as still future, 
Instead of being wrapped in the mists of the past, he could not but 
have dwelt more equally upon both sides of the picture. Whatever 
supernatural gifts a prophet might have, he was still and in all things 
a man. He was subject to moods like others, and the determination 
of these depended upon his surroundings. He was not kept by the 
power of God beyond the shadows which the clouds in his day might 
cast; and we may safely say that if the curses which are to follow 



126 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

disobedience are elaborated and dwelt upon much more than the 
blessings which are to reward obedience, it is because the author lived 
at a time of disobedience and revolt. Obviously his contemporaries 
were going far in the evil way, and he warns them with intense and 
eager earnestness against the dangers they are so recklessly incurring. 

This reasoning is so inconseqneaitial that it is difficult to 
see how anj man of discrimination could bo led into it except 
by the force of a foregone conclusion. If, as is here freely 
admitted, Moses may have ^^prophetically foretold Israel's dis- 
regard of warnings/' what could have led him to lay more 
emphasis on the cursos to come than on the blessings ? ;N"othing 
except the fact that the future was to be^ just Avhat he foretold. 
And if he had "dwelt more equally on both sides of the pic- 
ture," he would thereby have proved himself a false prophet; 
for the history of Israel, from the day that Moses died until 
their final dispersion by the Romans, contains tenfold more on 
the darker side of the picture than on the lighter. But Mr. 
Harper accounts for this difference on th© ground that the 
writer was "subject to moods" like others, and the unfaith- 
fulness and revolt common in his day gave form to his predic- 
tions. This is to contradict what had just been admitted ; for 
if a darker future was predicted than history was to verify, 
what becomes of the admission that Moses may have propheti- 
cally foretold what he did ? The explanation completely' 
ignores prophetic foresight. And this is unjust to the author 
of Deuteronomy, whether he was Moses or some unknown man 
in the time of Manasseh; for the captivity of Israel was at 
that time still in the future, and no uninspired man could have 
predicted it so clearly as he does, unless, indeed, he was a mere 
copyist of Hosea and Isaiah, with which he has never been 
charged. He not only predicts the Babylonian captivity, which 
was less than a hundred years in the future, but he predicts even 
more plainly the Roman captivity (xlix. 53), which was yet 
seven hundred years in the future. Who is more likely to have 
possessed this wonderful predictive power, Moses or some 
unknown writer under the wicked reign of Manasseh ? More- 
over, this chapter is admitted to be one of the most admirable 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 127 

specimens of oratory to be found in the whole Bible. Driver 
goes even further, and says of it: 

The chapter forms an eloquent and impressive peroration to the 
great exposition of Israel's duty which has preceded: and in sustained 
declamatory power it stands unrivaled in the Old Testament {Com., 
303). 

Who was this matchless orator ? Did he live and stir the 
heart of the nation to its depths, and still remain absolutely 
unknown to his generation, though living and writing in the 
very center of it ? Or was it really Moses, the great Egyptian 
scholar and Hebrew lawgiver, to whom it is expressly ascribed ? 
Surely there is nothing here to throw doubt on the Mosaic 
authorship, but everything to confirm it. 

(2) The song of Moses. The copy of this song which is 
preserved in the thirty-first chapter of Deuteronomy is preceded 
by three historical statements respecting it, and followed by 
another. 

The first is the command of the Lord to Moses: '^]^ow 
therefore write ye this song for you, and teach thou it to the 
children of Israel : put it in their mouths, that this song may 
be a witness for me against the children of Israel." According 
to this, the song was to be written by Moses; he was tO' taach 
the people to sing it, and it was to be preserved as God's wit- 
ness against them in any future departure from its sentiments. 
The last thought is repeated in the necxt statement: 'Tt shall 
come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon 
them, that this song shall testify before them as a witness ; for 
it shall not be forgotten from out of the mouths of their seed : 
for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, 
before I have brought them into the land which I sware." 
Here is the additional prediction that the song w^ould not be 
forgotten; and this is generally true of national songs such 
as this was intended to be^ In the third place, it is formally 
stated that "Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught 
it to the children of Israel" (xxxi. 19, 21, 22). The fourth 
statement, made at the end of the song, is this: "And Moses 
came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the 



128 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

people; he, and Hoshea the son of N^un" (xxxii. 44). If now, 
this song, which stands in between these last two statements, 
was actually composed as is here declared, and copied into the 
place which it now occupies, every generation of Israel, from 
the time of their first apostasy after the death of Joshua, real- 
ized the fulfillment of its purpose when it was read or sung; 
and the generation in which Hilkiah brought the book forth 
out of the temple realized it as keenly as any that preceded. 
But if, when the book was brought forth by Hilkiah, no aged 
Israelite had been able to remember the existence of the song 
in former years, or could remember hearing his forefathers 
speak of it., how could the whole nation have been made to be- 
lieve that it had existed through all their past generations, and 
had testified, as God said it would, against every generation that 
had apostatized ? The insertion in the book of these four state- 
ments would have exposed at once the falsehoods contained in 
them, and would have brought the whole book into contempt. 
Furthermore, if the supposed author of the book, in the reign 
of Josiah or Manasseh, had wished these four statements to 
be believed, he certainly would not have put such indications 
of date in the song itself as to demonstrate their falsity. We 
may affirm, then, a priori, that the song has nothing in it which 
the Deuteronomist considered inconsistent with these four 
statements. 

This leads us to the song itself. The first four verses are a 
magnificent appeal to heaven and earth to hear its lofty praises 
of Jehovah. Then follows at verse 5 an abrupt transition to 
these words: "They have dealt corruptly with him, they are 
not his children, it is their blemish; they are a perverse and 
crooked generation." The generation here spoken of is not 
designated. The words are applicable to almost any lo^eneration 
in the history of Israel, and they were not inappropriate to the 
generation to which Moses was bidding farewell. The sentence 
is so framed, indeed, that the generation to which Moses recited 
the song would instinctively apply it to itself, and every subse- 
quent sinful generation would as instinctively do the same. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 129 

This was necessary if the song was to have perpetually its 
intended effect. Xext after this fifth verse comes a series of 
questions and remarks having reference to events which had 
already transpired in the days of Moses, and reaching forward 
to the time when, in the luxuries of the promised land, he says^ 
"But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked" (verse 15). From this 
point forward the people are spoken of alternately in the third 
person and past tense., the second person and present tense, and 
in the future tense. But, amid this variety of form, every sen- 
tence uttered is an appropriate warning to every generation 
that might be a sinful one. There is nothing to indicate in the 
slightest degree a late date for the composition, except the fact, 
that in this last section the speaker in some sentences addresses 
a future generation as if he were present before them. This 
is the one evidence which is held by adverse critics as proof that 
the song is post-Mosaic. In arguing this point, Driver makes 
a series of statements which here demand our attention: 
Nothing in the poem points to Moses as its author. 

What force is there in this negation, when four stateimeaits 

of the author of the book in the immediate connection declare 

that he was the author ? 

The period of the Exodus, and of the occupation of Canaan, lies in 
the distant past (7-12), the story of which may be learned by the poet's 
contemporaries from their fathers (7). 

The correctness of this statement we deny. The period cov- 
ered by the verses cited was in the recent past when Moses stood 
on the bank of the Jordan, and the occupation of Canaan was 
not included. The verses referred to are these : 

Consider the years of many generations: 

Ask thy father, and he will shew thee; 

Thine elders, and they will tell thee. 

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, 

When he separated the children of men, 

He set the bounds of the peoples 

According to the number of the children of Israel. 

For Jehovah's portion is his people; 

Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. 

He found him in a desert land, 

And in the waste howling wilderness; 

He compassed him about, he cared for him, 



130 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

He kept him as the apple of his eye: 

As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, 

That fluttereth over her young, 

He spread abroad his wings, he took them, 

He bare them on his pinions: 

Jehovah alone did lead him. 

And there was no strange god with him. 

All this was certainly in the past when Moses is said to havc^ 

spoken, and only parts of it were in the distant past. The past 

tense is continued as the song gradually glides into the future, 

and the state of apostasy which was predicted in the twenty- 

eighth chapter is spoken of as if it were already in existence. 

On this feature of the song, as we have remarked above, is based 

the inference of its post-Mosaic otrigin. Driver says : 

To suppose that the poet adopted an assumed standpoint, espe- 
cially one between Israel's disaster and its deliverance, is highly 
unnatural (ib., 345). 

And Andrew Harper, in discussing the same question, says : 

Such a process is now generally regarded as not impossible indeed, 
but unheard of in the history of prophecy (Com., 452, note). 

To say that it is unnatural, is irrelevant; for all reial pre- 
diction is unnatural, and is guided not by the instincts of the 
prophet, but by the will of the inspiring Spirit. And to say 
that it is unheard of in the history of prophecy, is only to assort 
that it is found in this prophecy alone, which would not be a, 
\ery strange circumstance. There is no law requiring all 
prophecies to be alike. But it is not unheard of in the history 
of prophecy. A striking instance is found in so familiar a pass- 
age as the second Psalm. There the rage of kings and peoples 
against Jehovah and his anointed is depicted as if it were 
already in the past, and these kings are addressed in the second 
person with an admonition calling on them to be wise and to 
serve Jehovah with fear lest they perish when his wrath shall 
be kindled. Harper cites, in support of his assertion, the 
fact that Isa. xl.-xlvi. is "now ascribed to a prophet or prophets 
of the exile" (ih., 353). It is so ascribed by the class of critics 
to which he belongs, but this is to cite a disputed conclusion of 
these critics to prove the correctness of another which is also 
disputed. If conjectural critics are allowed this privilege, there 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. I3l 

is nothing which they can not prove to their own satisfaction, 
and to the satisfactio-n of nobody else. It is safe to say, too, 
that if, in connection with any one prediction in this part of 
Isaiah, there were four explicit statements that God commanded 
Isaiah the son of Amoz to write it and read it to the people, 
and cause them to memorize it, and that Isaiah did this., the 
most radical of our critics would hardly have the hardihood to 
deny that Isaiah was its author. But such is the exact fact in 
regard to this song of Mosee. Furthermore, in this very por- 
tion of the Book of Isaiah there are predictions in which this 
feature that Driver says is unnatural, and Harper says is 
unheard of, actually occurs. Take, for example, xliv. 22, 23 ; 
and let it be granted, for argumeut's sake, that it was written 
by a prophet in the exile. Writing before the exile is ended, 
he speaks of its end in the past tense, saying: ^'O Israel, thoii 
shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick 
cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return 
unto me ; for I have redeemed thee." Then, taking his 
standpoint at the close of this redemption, he calls upon 
all nature to rejoice with him, exclaiming: "Sing, yo 
heavens, for Jehovah hath done it ; shout, ye lower parts 
of the earth ; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, 
and every tree therein : for Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, and 
will glorify himself in Israel." Again, in the fifty-third chap- 
ter, which, in spite of all that unbelieving critics have said to 
the contrary, is a prediction resj^ecting the Messiah, if one is 
to be found anywhere in the Old Testament, the career of our 
suffering and dying Lord is depicted as if the prophet were 
standing this side of it, and looking back ; and it is only after 
his "soul has been made an offering for sin," that the prophet 
looks forward and declares that "he shall see his seed, and shall 
prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in 
his hands." The two principal allegations, then, on which 
critics base their denial of the Mosaic authorship of this song, 
are untrue ; and with these their contention breaks down. This 
makes it unnecessary to cumber these pages with a few other 



132 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

inferences, vague and without force, which are put forward by 
the same writers in the sections from which we have quoted. 
(See Driver, Com., 344-348; Harper, Com., 452-454.) One 
more remark of Harper is worthy of note as we close this dis- 
cussion : 

The contents of the song are in every way worthy of the origin 
assigned to it; and higher praise than this it is impossible to con- 
ceive (455). 

If this is true, how is it that the literary genius, not inferior 
to Moses, from whom it really sprang, lived in the midst of 
Jerusalem, in an enlightened age, and even his existence has not 
gone into the history of the times ? Is this credible ? 

(3) The blessing of the tribes. This poem, occupying the 
thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, is introduced with this 
statement : "And this is the blessing wherewith Moses the man 
of God blessed the children of Israel before his death.'' The 
authorship here asserted is denied by the critics who deny the 
Mosaic origin of the book as a whole. The grounds of this 
denial are fully set forth by Driver in his comments on. the 
chapter, and we shall consider them seriatim. He says: 

a. It is incredible that verse 5 ("Moses commanded us a law") 
could have been written by Moses. 

The question turns upon the use of the pronoun "us;" and 

it is to be determined by observing whether the giving of the 

law referred to was so far in the past that Moses mi^ht include 

himself among those to whom it was given. If we believe the 

record in Exodus and Leviticus, it was; for it had been given 

nearly forty years previous. The poem begins with the words, 

"Jehovah came from Sinai,'' which is a direct allusion to the 

events connected with that mountain, and the sentence of which 

the words in question are the beginning is this: 

Moses commanded us a law 

And inheritance for the assembly of Jacob, 

And he was king in Jeshurun, 

When the heads of the people were gathered, 

All the tribes of Israel together. 

The context shows plainly that the reference is to the law 
given at Mount Sinai, and Moses, thirty-nine years afterward, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 133 

might well say he gave it to us, seeing tliat it was law 
for him not less than for anj othei* Israelite. Moreover, 
the song was written to be sung by the people after the death 
of its author. It is then altogether credible that Moses wrote 
this passage. 

h. Verses 27 and 28 look back to the conquest of Palestine as past 

The verses read thus: 

The eternal God is thy dwelling place, 
And underneath are the everlasting arms: 
And he thrust out the enemy from before thee, 
And Israel dwelleth in safety, 
The fountain of Jacob alone, 
In a land of corn and wine; 
Yea, his heavens drop down dew. 

As the blessing is prophetic, and as the happy state here 

alluded to had been promised to Israel again and again, what 

is to hinder the thought that here the prophet speaks of the 

near future as if it were already present? Nothing is more 

common in prophecy. 

c. Verses 12 and 19-23 describe special geographical or other cir- 
cumstances (verse 21, the part taken by God in the conquest of 
Canaan) with a particularity not usual when the prophets are describ- 
ing the future. 

Suppose that they do: is the authorship of a prophecy to 
be denied because its "particularity'' is unusual ? -This would 
be a strange rule of criticism. And what are these geograph- 
ical allusions, the particularity of which is so unusual? In 
verse 12 it is said of Benjamin: 

The beloved of Jehovah shall dwell in safety by him; 

He covereth him all the day long. 

And he dwelleth between his shoulders. 

Instead of geographical allusions, there is nothing here but 
the nearness of Benjamin to his God who keeps him in safety 
— a matter with which geography has nothing to do. As to 
the other verses cited, the reader can see, by glancing over 
them, that while they contain allusions to the mountain, the 
sea, the sand, the west and the south, they are all of the vaguest 
kind, and such as a poet, speaking of either the past or the 
future, might easily make. 



134 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

d. The silence respecting Simeon presupposes a period when (as 
certainly was not the case till after the Mosaic period — Judg. i. 3) 
the tribe was absorbed in Judah. 

But this presupposition could not account for the silence 
about Simeon ; for a poet writing after Simeon disappeared as 
a tribe, and putting his poem in the mouth of Moses, would 
have been almost certain to make him predict the fate of Sim- 
eon. He could have had no reason for the omission. On the 
other hand, if Moses wrote the blessing, and if he was an in- 
spired prophet, it may have appeared to the Spirit wise not 
to make known beforehand the sad fate awaiting the tribe, but 
rather, by silence with reference to it, to leave the members 
of the tribe and of all the others in wonder as to the reason, 
until the event should disclose it. Once more the argument 
is reversed and favors the Mosaic authorship. 

Continuing his argument, Driver admits that the blessing 
is ancient, more so than the Book of Deuteronomy, and de- 
cides that its most probable date is "shortly after the rupture 
under Jeroboam I." He argues the question thus: 

The blessing presupposes a period when Reuben had dwindled in 
numbers and Simeon had ceased to exist as an independent tribe, when 
the tribe of Levi was warmly respected (verses 8-11), when the temple 
had been built and was regarded with affection by pious worshipers of 
Jehovah (12), when Ephraim was flourishing and powerful (13-17), 
and Zebulon and Issachar commercially prosperous (19). Judah, on 
the contrary (7), would seem to have been in some diflSiculty or need, 
and (see the note) severed from the rest of Israel. No trace of idol- 
atry, or of Israel's declension from its ideal, ... no word of censure 
or reproach (387). 

In all this Driver assumes that there is no predictive ele- 
ment whatever in the blessing, and thus he agrees with his un- 
believing predecessors in this criticism. His allegations, so 
far as they are true, agree perfectly with the Mosaic date, and 
positively disagree with that which he espouses. For instance, 
when Moses died, Reuben had already "dwindled in numbers," 
for at the first census his number was 46,500, and at the sec- 
ond census, thirty-nine years later, it was only 43,730. The 
allegation about Simeon we have just disposed of abova As 
to the tribe of Levi, it was as warmly respected in the last 
days of Moses, when it had successfully carried the ark and 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 135 

the tabernacle tlirougii the wilderness, and had never engaged 
in any rebellion, as it ever .was afteirward, and far more so 
til an in the days of Jeroboam, when all the Levites living in 
his territory Avere forced to leave their homes and retire into 
Judah in consequence of Jeroboam's sin with the golden 
calves and his other unlawful practices. For the statement 
that the temple had been built, there is not the slightest evi- 
dence in the verse referred to as proof. It reads thus: 

Of Benjamin he said, 

The beloved of Jehovah shall dwell in safety by him; 

He covereth him all the day long, 

And he dwelleth between his shoulders. 

An allusion to the temple has to be read into this verse: 
it is not there. Benjamin could be beloved of Jehovah, and 
dw^ll in safety by him; and Jehovah could cover him all the 
day, and dwell between his shoulders as well before the temple 
was built, or after it was destroyed, as while it was standing. 
Furthermore, this high spiritual encomium on Benjamin was 
altogether undeserved at any long period after the death of 
Moses. We have only to think of the affair at Gibeah, of 
King Saul, of Shimei, of Sheba's rebellion, and of the insig- 
nificance of Benjamin at the time of Jeroboam's defection, 
in order to realize how shocking would be the application of 
this blessing to Benjamin in the later history. 

Xext we are told that the blessing was written "wKen 
Ephraim was flourishing and powerful, and Zebulon and Issa- 
char commercially prosperous." But all that is said of these 
three tribes is spoken in the future tense. It is prophecy and 
not history, though the argument assumes that it is the latter. 
Moreover, though Ephraim was certainly prosperous and pow- 
erful under the reign of Jeroboam, it w^as no less so in the 
reigns of Saul, David and Solomon. Indeed, when Moses died, 
the combined tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which are both 
included in this blessing, outnumbered every other tribe by 
many thousands. And as to the commercial prosperity of Zeb- 
ulon and Issachar, there is not a Avord said about it in the hi&- 



136 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tory of Jeroboiam's reign. It exists only in the imaginatioa 
of the critic. 

Finally, our author says that the blessing points to "no 
trace of idolatry, or of Israel's declension from its ideal . . . 
no word of censure o^r reproach." This is true; and the statei- 
ment of it is on the critic's part suicidal; for in the period 
of Jeroboam I. the one sensation of the time was the calf -wor- 
ship set up by Jeroboam, and his decree that his subjects 
should no longer go to Jerusalem to worship. This is the sin 
the references to which ring like a chorus through all the sub- 
sequent chapters of the Book of Kings, till the fall of Israel, 
styled "the sin which Jeroboam the son of Nebat taught Israel 
to sin." From Professor Driver's own point of view there 
could not be a more complete demonstration, than is here pre- 
sented, that the date which he advocates is not the true ona 
Indeed, there is not a period in the history of Israel, from 
the death of Moses to that of Josiah, to which this last char- 
acteristic of the blessing could be fully applied. To the full 
extent that it has any force as evideuce, it is proof that the 
blessing came from the lips of Moses. 

As to Judah, he was not, in the time of Jeroboam, "severed 
from the rest of Israel," for he had Benjamin with him, and 
he was not "in some difficulty or need;" on the contrary, he 
raised a powerful army for the purpose of bringing back into 
subjection the tribes in rebellion undeir Jeroboam, and was 
turned back from the attempt only by the command of God 
through the prophet Shemaiah. The words of the blessing 
pronounced on Judah are these: 

Hear, Jehovah, the voice of Judah, 

And bring him in unto his people: 

With his hands he contended for himself; 

And thou shalt be an help against his adversaries. 

The early history of the patriarch Judah himself supplies 
the facts here alluded to. After his father and his brethren 
returned from Padan-aram, he separated himself from his 
brethren, went down to Adullam, and united in business with 
a Canaanite named Hirah, married there, and resided there 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 137 

until after the birth of his two grandsons Perez and Zerah 
(Gen. xxxviii. 1-30). 

We now have before lis the grounds on which, this learned 
commentator would have us deny the Mosaic authorship of 
the blessing of the tribes, and we have seen that e^^ery one of 
them is without force in that direction, while the majority of 
them have great force in favor of the opposite conclusion. 

§7. Evidence in the Historical Books. 

In this section we shall follow chiefly the line of argu- 
ment pursued by W. Robertson Smith. Our quotations, ex- 
cept when othei'wi&e designated, shall be from his Old Tes- 
tament in the Jewish Church. 

1. Joshua and Chronicles Set Aside. Our author, in com- 
mon with all of the destructive critics, while arguing from 
the historical books, deliberately sets aside, as unworthy of 
credence, the Book of Joshua, which covers the earliest period 
after Moses, and the Books of Chronicles, which cover the 
whole historic period from the death of King Saul to the 
close of the exile. With respect to the former. Professor 
Smith says: 

In working out this part of the subject, I shall confine your atten- 
tion in the first instance to the books earlier than the time of Ezra, 
and in particular to the histories in the "earlier prophets," from Judges 
to II. Kings. I exclude the Book of Joshua because it in all its 
parts hangs closely together with the Pentateuch. The difficulties 
which it presents are identical with those of the books of Moses, and 
can only be explained in connection with the critical analysis of the 
law (235). 

The reason given for this exclusion is vague enough. The 
book does hang closely together with the Pentateuch, and this 
is a necessity if its records are true, seeing that it describes 
the introduction into Canaan of the people to whom the laws 
in the preceding books had professedly been given, and their 
experiences under these laws through one generation. But 
why this should be a reason for rejecting its testimony in 
respect to the existence of these laws, it seems that none but 
a critic with a foregone conclusion can see. Principal Cave 



138 THE AUTHORSHIP OJ^ 

very justly pronounced it ^^an exclusion which looks very sin- 
gularly like shelving, from the exigency of theory, an awk- 
ward series of facts which renders the theory suspect" (7. 
0. T,, 282). We will show, under a later section, that if this 
'^awkward series of facts" actually occurred, the theory in 
question, both as to the law in Deuteronoany, and that in the 
middle books of the Pentateuch, is absolutely falsified. The 
exclusion of the testimony of this book is an admission, to 
say the least, that it furnishes no evidence in favor of the 
theory. 

Of the Books of Chronicles our author ha,s this to say : 

The tendency of the Chronicler to assume that the institutions of 
his own age existed under the old kingdom makes his narrative useless 
for the purpose now in hand, where we are expressly concerned with 
the differences between ancient and modern usage (235)." 

The words ^'useless for the purpose now in hand" are well 
chosen; for to one who is aiming to show differences between 
ancient and modern usage, a book which represents modem, 
usage as being the same with ancient usage is, of course, ^'use- 
less for the purpose in hand." It would seem, however, that 
to a writer who is seeking to learn whether such differences 
really exist or not, such a book is the very one he would find 
most useful, provided there are no other grounds for impeach- 
ing its testimony. 

Here a footnote which I find in Principles of Biblical 

Criticism, by J. J. Lias (p. 65), is in point: 

De Wette lets us into the secret of this hostility to Chronicles. 
"The whole Jewish history," he says, "on its most interesting and 
important side, that of religion and the manner of observing the 



" The destructive critics have no mercy on the Chronicler. Kuenen 
says: "It is quite certain now that about the year 300 B. C, or still 
later, he rewrote the history of Israel before the exile in a sacerdotal 
spirit, and, in so doing, violated historical truth throughout" (Rel. of 
Israel, I. 321). If he did worse in this respect, or one-tenth as bad 
as our modern scientific critics have done, the Lord have mercy on 
him. Wellhausen, among a number of severe remarks about him, says: 
"One might as well try to hear the grass growing as attempt to de- 
rive from such a source as this a historical knowledge of ancient Is- 
rael" (quoted by Alexander Stewart, Lex M., 400). And one might 
as well attempt to smell the color of the grass as to derive such knowl- 
edge from such sources as the writings of Wellhausen. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 139 

worship of God, assumes quite a different shape when the accounts in 
Chronicles have been set aside." So also: "A multitude of troublesome 
proofs, difficult to deal with, of the existence of the Mosaic books in 
earlier times, vanish altogether." It is with De Wette that all these 
fierce attacks on Chronicles originate. And with charming naivete 
he has told us the reason. 

Eobertson Smith, and his English and American follow- 
ers, do not venture to give De Wette's reason for accepting 
his conclusion, but the one which thej do give is no reason 
at all, and this suggests the inevitable suspicion that his rea- 
son is really theirs. 

2. In the Book of Xehemiah. We shall now take up, in 
an order of our own, the several passages in the historical 
books by which our author seeks to prove that the Pentateuchal 
law was not knoT\Ti or enforced until the time of Ezra. He 
admits freely that the law in the hands of Ezra was "prac- 
tically identical with our present Hebrew Pentateuch," and 
he affirms that from that time forward it was "the municipal 
and religious code of Israel" (43).^^ This fact should be 
distinctly noted and remembered by students of criticism. 
But he makes use of a passage in Xehemiah to prove that 
this had not been the case previously. He says: 

The people in their confession very distinctly state that their law 
had not been observed by their ancestors, or their rulers, or their 
priests, up to that time (Neh. ix. 34) ; and in particular it is men- 
tioned that the feast of tabernacles had never been observed with the 
ceremonial prescribed in the law from the time that the Israelites 
occupied Canaan under Joshua (Neh. viii. 17). 

What is here said of the confession made by the people, 
if it has any bearing upon the question at issue, is intended 
to make the impression that their ancestors had not kept the 
law because they did not have it. But the opposite is the 
truth; for their words are: "Neither have our kings, our 
princes, our priests, nor our fathers kept thy law, nor heark- 
ened unto thv commandments and thv testimonies wherewith 



"This is conceded even by the radicals. Wellhausen says: "Sub- 
stantially at least, Ezra's law-book, in the form in which it became 
the Magna Charta of Judaism in or about the year 444, must be re- 
garded as practically identical with our Pentateuch, although many 
minor amendments and very considerable additions may have been 
made at a later date" (Art. "Israel." Encyc. Brit., p. 428, c. 2), 



140 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

thou didst testify against them.'' How could the law 
testify against them, if they did not have it? They had the 
law them, but had not kept It; and by "the law" is meant 
the law then in the hands of Ezra, from which he had 
been reading, and Professor Smith admits, as we have just 
seen, that it was "practically our present Hebrew Pentateuch." 
Moreover, in an earlier part of this prayer (verrses 13, 14), 
the Levites who are praying, not the whole people, as Smith 
seems to think, declare that God had given this law, with its 
commandments and statutes, at Mount Sinai, and by the hand 
of his servant Moses. In their confession of sins, they con- 
fess precisely what we now read in their sacred books froni 
their own day baok to the beginning. This prayer, which fills 
the ninth chapter of I^ehemiah, is an exhibition of most re- 
markable historical knowledge on the part of those who offered 
it; for it begins with the call of Abraham, and it touches, in 
passing down the stream of time, all the salient features of 
Israel's history without a break in the chronology, or a sin- 
gle mistake in the facts. As you read it you see that their 
memories pass from one book to another in such a manner as 
is most rare even in these days of printed Bibles, l^ot one 
preacher or priest in a thousand could, to this day, in an ex- 
tempore prayer, do the same. They knew what they say 
about the giving of the law, and about the way in which their 
fathers had disobeyed it, because they had committed to mem- 
OTY the facts from the same books which we now read. The 
agreement could not otherwise be so perfect. 

Professor Smith deals unfairly also with the other pass- 
age which he cites. Instead of saying that the feast of tab- 
ernacles "had never been observed with the ceremonial pre^ 
scribed by the law from the time that Israel occupied Canaan 
under Joshua," they speak of only one part of the ceremonial, 
that of living in booths made of the boughs of trees'; and 
say that this had not been observed before sim^e the days of 
^Joshua, not "from the time that Israel occupied Canaan un- 
der Joshua." There is a difference here of at least twenty- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 141 

five years. It is implied tliat during those tAventy-five years 
they did dwell in booths during this feast, but had not done 
so sinca ^N'ehemiah speaks of this as an infractioai of the 
law, which it could not have beem if this law had not existed 
from the days of Joshua. Furthermore, the words used imply 
that in the days of Joshua this ceremonial had been observed; 
for otherwise the remark that it had not been since then would 
have no force. A little thought w^ill show that w^hile there 
was no adequate excuse for this neglect, there was an exten- 
uation for it The number of green boughs which would be 
necessary every fall for the w^hole male popula.tioai of Israel 
to build booths would soon strip all of the trees in the vicinity 
of Jerusalem of the boughs which they could spare and still 
live; and the fear of thus denuding and destroying fruit and 
forest trees alike, sufficiently accounts for the neglect. It fur- 
nishes a much more plausible excuse for this omission than. 
Israel could plead for many others of which they w^re guilty. 
And even now they were compelled, after the surrounding 
trees had enjoyed an uninterrupted growth during the whole 
period of the captivity, to strip olive-trees, both tame and 
wild, and palm-trees, as well as those called "thick trees." 

3. In the Book of Judges. Eobertson Smith is very rad- 
ical in his position on the evidence of this book, and he argues 
it with a persistency equaled only by his inaccuracy in rep- 
resenting the facts. In opening the discussion, he says: 

We need not dwell on the fact that the whole religion of the time 
of the Judges was Levitically false. . . . Acts of true worship, which 
Jehovah accepted as the tokens of a penitent heart, and answered by- 
deeds of deliverance, were habitually associated with illegal sanctu- 
aries (0. T., 267). 

In support of these assertions he presents five specifications : 

(1) At Bochim the people wept at God's rebuke, and sacrificed 
to the Lord (Judg. ii. 5). 

We have already answered, in another connection, that the 
location of Bochim is not known, that it may have been hard 
by the tent of meeting, and that there is not the slightest 
evidence that the sacrifice was not offered on the altar made 
bv Moses. 



142 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

(3) Deborah and Barak opened their campaign at the sanctuary 
of Kadesh. 

There is not a syllable in the text to support this assertion, 
neither is there the slightest hint that such a sanctuary ever 
existed. This is an instance of manufacturing Scripture. 
Let the reader search the account in Judges iv., and Deiborah's 
song in chapter v., to verify this statement. 

(3) Jehovah himself commanded Gideon to build an altar and do 
sacrifice at Ophrah, and this sanctuary still existed in the days of the 
historian (Judg. vi. 24). 

But if Jehovah com^manded it, this made it lawful. More- 
over, the occasion of this command, which was to rebuke the 
idolatry of the people of Ophrah, by tearing do-wn their altar 
of Baal, and defiantly building an altar to Jehovah in its 
place, justified the irregularity. This end would not have 
been accomplished by sending Gideon to Shiloh with his offer- 
ing. In the statement that "this sanctuary still existed in the 
days of the historian,'' Smith uses the word "sanctuary" where 
the text says "this altar." The statement of the text was sug- 
gested by the fact that though the people of Ophrah were 
so enraged when the altar was built that they wanted to kill 
the man who tore down Baal's altar and erected this, yet they 
let it stand. There is not the slightest hint that it became 
a sanctuary; so here again our critic manufactures evidence. 

(4) Jephthah spake all his words "before the Lord" at Mizpah or 
Ramoth-Gilead, the ancient sanctuary of Jacob, before he went forth 
in the spirit of the Lord to overthrow the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 11, 29; 
Gen. xxxi. 45, seq.). 

But neither Mizpah nor Bamoth-Gilead ever was a "sanc- 
tuary of Jacob." He was overtaken at Mizpah by Laban ; he 
erected a rude monument there to mark a spot beyond which 
neither he nor Laban should ever pass to harm the other, 
and he offered a sacrifice on the occasion; but he never visited 
the spot again, and there is not the slightest ground for styling 
it a sanctuary. Moreover, Jephthah could speak all his words 
"before the Lord," by calling the Lo'rd to witness what he 
said, without going to a sa.nctuary for the purpose. 

(5) Jephthah's vow before the campaign was a vow to do sacrifice 
at Mizpah. 



fHE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 143 

It was not. The place where the sacrifice was to be of- 
fered is • not mentioned. He may have intended, so far as 
the text either affirms or intimates, to offer it at Shiloh, oi* 
at any other place which an outlaw such as he had been might 
select. 

Here are now tJie five sjjccifications by which we are to 
be convinced that ^^the whole religion of the time of the 
Judges was Levitically false, and that acts of true worship 
were habitually associated with illegal sanctuaries.'' Sup- 
pose that all of the five were established as instances in point, 
what w^ould they prove ? Simply, that within a period of 
three centuries acceptable w^orship was offered three times 
at illegal sanctuaries. And how far would this go toward 
proving that this was habitual in these three centuries? What 
proof would it furnish that "the whole religion of the time 
was Levitically false" ? Were Deborah and Barak and Gideon 
and Jephthah tlie only persons who worshiped God w4th true 
worship in that three hundred years ? What was going on at 
Shiloh, where the tabernacle stood from the days of Joshua 
till the death, of Eli, and whither some true men like Elkanah 
were even at the last date still going up yearly with their 
families and their victims ? How shall we characterize such 
perversity in manufacturing evidence? 

But our disciple of Wellhausen perseveres in his line of 

argument and we must follow him still further. He says: 

All God's acts of grace mentioned in the Book of Judges, all his 
calls to repentance, and all the ways in which he appears from time 
to time to support his people, and to show himself their living God, 
ready to forgive in spite of their disobedience, are connected witli 
this same local worship (267). 

In this statement there is not a woTd of truth. The only 
specifications given to support it, ot that can be given, are 
the ^YQ just disposed of above. 

Again he says of this period of the Judges : 

The call to repentance is never a call to put aside the local sanc- 
tuaries and worship only before the ark of Shiloh (i6.). 

This is true; and it is true l>ecause there were no such 
sanctuaries then in existence. The calls to repentance were 



144 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

calls in reference to the illegal worship of the gods of Canaan, 
This is true in every instance, as any reader of the hook may 
see for himself. If any one doubts it, he can test the state- 
ment in an hour by glancing through the Book of Judges. 
And in thus calling the people back from heathen worship, 
they were called to worship at Shiloh just as surely as the 
true worship was still conducted, there, of which there can 
be no reasonable dooibt. 

4. The Eitual at Shiloh. We next consider what our 
critic has to say about the service at Shiloh. He admits that 
throughout the period of Judges "the ark was settled at Shi- 
loh,'' and that "a legitimate priesthood ministered before it." 
But he declares that "the ritual was not that of the Levitical 
law" (268). In his effort to make good his declaration, the 
number of alleged discrepancies between the two rituals which 
he tries to exhibit, is not so great as his own misrepresenta- 
tions of the Shiloh ritual. He first says: 

Shiloh was visited by pilgrims from the surrounding country of 
Ephraim, not three times a year according to the Pentateuchal law, but 
at an annual feast (i&.). 

The only foundation for this statement is the case of El- 
kanah, described in the first chapter of I. Samuel. It so hap- 
pens that Elkanah came from the country of Ephraim, but 
how does Professor Smith know that the "pilgrims" who came 
thither were from the same tribe? He says they came at "an 
annual feast." But this is not authorized by the text. Elka- 
nah's annual visit was not to attend one of the annual feasts, 
but, as the text says, "to worship and to sacrifice to Jehovah 
of hosts in Shiloh." Yon could not know from the text that 
any otheir than Elkanah' s own family were present on the oc- 
casion of any of his visits (see i. 3, 21, 24, 25). The asser- 
tion that the "pilgrims" did not go up "three times a year 
according to the Pentateuchal law," is groundless. Eor aught 
that Professor Smith knew when he penned this, or could know, 
Elkanah himself may have gone to the annual feasts in 
addition to going for his o^vn family devotions. The annu- 
al feasts, according to the Pentateuchal law, were occasions 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 145 

for the national celebration of great events. Our critic has 
here committed the blunder of taking the annual visits of one 
devout man to worship God with his family, as proof of 
what Israel as a people did or did not do; and he has selected 
his example from the time when, according to the text itself, 
the people in general had been forced to "abhor the offering 
of Jehovah'' by the disgraceful conduct of tlie priests. By this 
state of degeneracy and corruption he would have us judge 
the service at Shiloh throughout the previous three hundred 
years. 

We are next told, with i^eference to the so-called "annual 
feast" which Elkanah attended, that "this appears to have been 
a vintage feast, like the Pentateuchal feast of tabernacles ; for 
is was accompanied by dances in the vineyards ( Judg. xxi. 21) ; 
and, according to I. Sam. i. 20, 21, it took place when the new 
year came in ; that is, the close of the agricultural year, which 
ended with, the ingathering of the vintage (Ex. xxxiv. 22)." 
Here, again, the learned professor commits blunder after 
blunder. He has the girls of Judg. xxi. 21 dancing in the 
vineyards, the worst place on dry ground that they could find 
to dance in, w^hereas the text has the young men who were to 
steal the girls, hid in the viners^ards. He supposes the feast to 
be that of the tabernacles held "at the close of the year which 
ended with the ingathering of the vintage," forgetting that in 
Palestine the grapes ripen in July, and the vintage follows 
immediately, w^hile it is the olive gathering, and not the vin- 
tage, which ends the agricultural year. At that time the vines 
have dropped their leaves, and the vineyards would not afford 
a hiding-place for the young men who stole the dancing girls. 
This incident connects far more closely with the feast of Pen- 
tecost, w^hen the vines w^ere in full leaf, than with the feast of 
tabernacles, when they were bara-^^ Again, he has the year 
closing at the time of Samuel's birth, "according to the correct 
rendering of I. Sam. i. 20, 21." As rendered in the Revised 

^'Here Smith was misled by Kuenen, who expresses the same 
idea in Religion of Israel, II. 27. 



146 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Version, that text reads, ^'And it came to pass, wihen tJbe time 
was CQime aboiut, that Hannah conceived and bare a son." Tlie 
clause, ^Svhen the time was comie about," means the time for 
Hannah to conceive and bear a son. The "correct rendering," 
which Smith suggests, is, "when the new year came." Sup- 
pose we adopt it ; what is the result ? Only this : "It came to 
pass, when the new year came in, that Hannah conceived and 
bare a son." And how does this sbow that the feast at which 
Hannah prayed for a son, was the feast of tabernacles? A 
woman may pray for a son on the fourtli of July, or any day 
of any month, and still not conceive and bear bim till after 
the new year comes in. Finally, the blunder is committed of 
quoting Ex. xxxiv. 22, in support of the assertion that tbe 
agricultural year ended with "tbe ingatbering of the vintage;" 
whereas the passage says nothing about the vintage. It says, 
"Thou sbalt obser^^e the feast of weeks, even the firstfruits of 
wheat ba,rvest, and tbe feast of ingathering at the end of the 
year." Professor Smith could not have been ignorant, for he 
was familiar witJi Palestine both from reading and froim 
residing in it, that the last ingatbering of the year is not that 
of the grapes, but, as we have said above, that of tbe olives. 
ISText to the wheat harvest this is tbe most valuable harvest of 
the year. 

Professor Smith asserts that the service at Shiloh was sl 
local affair, attended only by "pilgrims from the surround- 
ing country of Ephraim." If he had said tbis with reference 
to the time of Hannah's prayer, it is possible that he might 
have been correct; foT this was the time at which the officia- 
ting priests had, by their covetous and beastly conduct, dis- 
gusted the people with the offerings of Jehovah. It was when 
Jehovah himself was on the eve of providentially destroying 
the whole family of Eli and divorcing the ark of his covenant 
from the tabernacle which they had defiled. But as a repre- 
sentation of the service at Shiloh as a whole, running back as 
it did through nearly three centuries, it is as false as it can 
be, and the passage in Judges which he cites, when the dancing 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 147 

girls vrere stolen by the yo'Uiig Benjamit^is, is prcx>f of this; 
for at the close of the incident it is said, ^'The children of 
Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and 
to his family, and they weoit out thence every man to his inher- 
itance" (Judg. xxi. 24). This was while Phinehas was still 
alive (xx. 27), and it was therefore very soon after the death 
of Joshua ; and it shows tliat then the people from the tribes 
in general came up to Shiloh to worship. Why judge tlie 
whole period from what we read at the end of it, rather than 
by the order established at the beginning? Was it because 
these facts were not known to the critic, or was it because 
they were very conveniently ignored? 

Professor Smith next points out in detail the evideoaoes 
that the ritual of Shiloh was not that of the Levitical law. 
He says (1) that — 

Eli's sons would not burn the fat of the sacrifice till they had 
procured a portion of uncooked meat (I. Sam. ii. 12, seq., Revised 
Version, margin). Under the Levitical ordinance this was perfectly 
regular; the worshiper handed over the priest's portion of the flesh 
along with the fat, and part of the altar ceremony was to wave it 
before Jehovah (Lev. vii. 30, seq., x. 15). But at Shiloh the claim 
was viewed as illegal and highly wicked (0. T., 269). 

There is just enough inaccuracy in this representation, both 
of the law and the custom of Eli's sons, to make out the dis- 
crepancy aimed at. The law as it stands in the passages cited 
from Leviticus required the offerer of the peace-offering to 
give to the priest the fat and the breast and right thigh. The 
priest was to burn the fat as the Lord's part, then wave before 
the Lord the breast and thigh as his own part. The rest of 
the animal was cooked and eaten by the offerer and his family. 
To deal fairly with the case, w^e should suppose that thus far 
the sons of Eli proceeded according to the law ; and that they 
did so is implied in what follows; for the first offense charged 
against them in the text, but wholly unnoticed by our critic, 
is, that while the offerer was boiling his portion of the flesh 
the priest's servant came with a flesh-hook of three teeth and 
stuck it into the vessel, and whatever it brought up he took 
away. This is evidently treated as an exaction beyond what 



148 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the priest was entitled to. Tlie second charge is, that before 
they burned the fat, that is, before they gave the Lo^rd his por- 
tion, they made another exaction by demanding from the 
offerer iome of his portion of the raw flesh. Here were two 
exactions beyond what the law allowed; and the law has to be 
presupposed in order to see the unlawfulness of the priest's 
conduct. The bearing of the passage, then, is the reverse of 
what is claimed by the critic. It shows that the law was 
known, by showing the ways in which it was violated. Fur- 
thermore, without the pre-existence of the Levitical law, how 
would these priests, or the woirshipers, have known anything 
about the fat, ot about the priests' portion and the people's por- 
tion of the peace-offerings ? How could anybody have thought 
that "the sin of the young men was very great before Jehovali/' 
if Jehovah had not given the law which they were violating? 
A wicked violation of the law necessarily presupposes a knowl- 
edge of the law. 

(2) The ark stood, not in the tabernacle, but in a temple with 
door-posts and folding doors, which were thrown open during the 
day (I. Sam. i. 9; iii. 15). 

True, the structure in which the ark stood is in the first 
of these passages called "the temple of Jehovah." In the sec- 
ond it is called "the house of Jehovah." But in ii. 22 it is 
called by its old name, "the tent of meeting." If it was the 
tent of meeting, this constituted it the house of Jehovah and 
the temple of Jehovah; for any structure devoted to the wor- 
ship of God bears properly both of the latter titles. 

(3) But the structure here called a temple had "door-posts and 
folding doors," whereas the tent of meeting had only "an embroi- 
dered linen hanging in front." 

True, but it is still, according to the same writer, 
"the tent of meeting." What follows? That the struc- 
ture is no longer the tent of meeting? or that the 
tent of meeting now has, in addition to its front cur- 
tain, a wooden protection with doors to open and shuti — 
doors which are closed at night, but which leave the front as it 
was from the beginning when they are opened in the daytime ? 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 149 

This is all; and it is not strange that in the course of three 
centuries since this tent was constructed, a wooden protection, 
Y/hether with or without divine authority, was erected in front 
of it. This has nothing to do with the "ritual of Shiloh." 

(4) In the evening a lamp was burned in the temple (I. Sam 
ill. 3), but, contrary to the Levitical prescription (Ex. xxvii. 21; 
Lev. xxiv. 2), the light was not kept up all night, but was allowed 
to go out after the ministers of the temple lay down to sleep (i&.). 

This neglect is easily accounted for, when we remember 
the avarice and general wickedness of Eli's sons who were 
then the active "ministers of the temple;" but how, if this was 
not the old tent of meeting in which the Levitical law required 
the lamp to bum all night, can it be accounted for that it was 
burned even a part of the night? Here, again, a partial neg- 
lect of the law shows the previous existence of the law. 

(5) Access to the temple was not guarded on the rules of Leviti- 
cal sanctity. According to I. Sam. iii. 3, Samuel, as a servant of 
the sanctuary, who had special charge of the doors (verse 15), actu- 
ally slept "in the temple of Jehovah where the ark of God was." 

Yes, he actually slept in the temple where the ark of God 
was; and if this means that he slept in the same apartment of 
the temple in which the ark was, there was certainly a viola- 
tion of the Levitical law. But how could this be thought 
strange under the management of such priests as Hophni and 
Phinehas? l^othing was too irregular or unlawful to meet 
their sanction if it suited their whims or their convenience. 
If it is objected that Eli was in supreme control, the objection 
is set aside by the fact that Eli's sons had complete control 
of Eli. 

But does this text mean that Samuel slept in the holy 
of holies, the inner room of the sanctuary? It does not so 
assert ; for if he slept in the holy place, or in the wooden struc- 
ture which had been erected in front, he would still be said 
to sleep in the temple of the Lord. We have similar phrase- 
ology in reference to the temple in the time of Christ. What- 
ever was done in the Jewish court, or in the Gentile court, was 
said to be done in the temple. The fair construction of the 
text, the construction which was always put upon it till 



150 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

destructive critics commenced tlieir work, is merely that Sam- 
uel slept in some part of the structure in which it was thought 
proper for a little boy to sleep. 

(6) It is taken for granted that Samuel became a priest at once. 
As a child he ministers before Jehovah, wearing the ephod which 
the law confines to the high priest, and not only this, but the high 
priestly mantle— I. Sam. ii. 18, 19 (270). 

I wonder if Professor Smith never saw a little boy dressed 
up in the uniform of a British officer — buttons, feathers, gold 
lace and all ? Did he argue from that that those who dressed 
him so took it for granted that he was already a major-gen- 
eral ? Why, then, charge such folly on little Samuel's mo'ther 
when she dressed him in imitation of a priest? There is no 
evidence that he wore either the ephod or the mantle except 
in his childhood, when he could not officiate as a priest, even 
if he had been the son of a priest, 

(7) And, above all, it is noteworthy that the service of the great 
day of expiation could not have been legitimately performed in the 
temple of Shiloh, where there was no awful seclusion of the ark in 
an inner adyton, veiled from every eye, and inaccessible on ordinary 
occasions to every foot (ib.). 

This is true only on the supposition that Samuel slept in 
the most holy place, of which, as we have said above:, there is 
no proof. The inner sanctuary may have been as closely 
veiled as ever before and the child may have slept in some 
other part of the "house of Jehovah." 

(8) These things strike at the root of the Levitical system of 
access to God. But of them the prophet who came to Eli has nothing 
to say. He confines himself to the extortions of the younger priests 
(i&.). 

On the contrary, we have seen that not one of ^^these things" 
strikes at the root of the Levitical system, except the miscon- 
duct of the priests; and it follows that when the prophet 
rebuked Eli for this alone, he did precisely right. The propo- 
sition that the ritual of Shiloh was not the ritual of the Levit- 
ical law, has, we now see, no more truth in it than the one pre- 
ceding it, that "the whole religion of the time of the judges was 
Levitically false." 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 151 

After the reanoval of the ark from the tent of meeting in 
Shiloh, and its stay of seven months in the land of the Phil- 
istines, it remained twenty years in Kiriath-jearim before we 
learn anything more of the altar service in Israel. During 
that period the Philistines held control of central Palestine, 
and Samuel was growing up from childhood to manhood. He 
then took control of public affairs, and acted in the threefold 
capacity of judge, prophet and priest until Saul was fully 
inducted into his office as king (I. Sam. vii. 1-xii. 25). He 
did not restore the ark to its place in the tent of meeting, 
neither did he ever return to the latter or restore its priest- 
hood. In view of these facts, Robertson Smith remarks: 

The truth is that Samuel did not know of a systematic and ex- 
clusive system of sacrificial ritual confined exclusively to the sanctuary 
of the ark (0. T., 274). 

The truth of this assertion we have sufficiently discussed in 
Section 3. 

But while we have sufficiently refuted in Section 3 the 
arguments of the critics, there is another side to the evidence 
drawn from tliis part of Israel's history. Pobertson Smith 
himself mentions a number of facts connected with, it, the true 
bearing of which on the general question he fails to observe. 
He cites the facts that Saul ^^destroyed necromancy;" that "he 
was keenly alive to the sin of eating flesh with the blood ;" that 
a man ceremonially unclean "might not sit at his table" (ih., 
271). But how did Saul know these things, every one of 
which was a subject of Levitical legislation, if the Levitical 
law had not yet been given ? "The priests," he says, "of the 
house of Eli were at ^ob, where there was a regular sanctuary 
with shewbread, and no less than eighty-five priests w^earing a 
linen ephod" (272). But how could they have a regular sanc- 
tuary with shew^bread, if the law in which this unique kind of 
bread to be eaten by priests alone originated, had not yet been 
given? The parts of the law which were still observed dur- 
ing periods of religious anarchy were precisely such as to 
prove that the law had been given ; for they were such as could 
not spring up independeatly. 



152 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

5. Offerings Made by Saul and David. Professor Smith 
specifies, oa pages 274 and 275 of his work, several other irreg- 
ularities which prove ignorance, as he argues, of the Levitr 
ical law: 

(1) Saul's sacrifice a,t Gilgal (I. Sam. xiii. 8), which he 
says was not regarded as a sin because he was not of the house 
of Aaron, but because he did not wait for the presence of 
Samuel; and in this co-unectiom he alleges that it was then the 
privilege of every Israelite to offer sacrifice. It is true that 
Saul sinned by not waiting for the prophet; but theire is no 
evidence whatever that he personally officiated at the altar. 
Immediately after the sacrifice he moved his little army back 
up to Gibeah, whence they had fled seven days before from the 
Philistines, and when he reached that place Ahitub the priest 
was with him, and was called on to inquire of the Lord (xiii. 
15, 16; xiv. 1-3, 18, 19). How can Professor Smith know 
that he did not come up from Gilgal with Saul, and that Saul 
did not offer the burnt offerings a.n.d peace-offerings at Gilgal 
by his hand, and not by his own? Has a critic the right to 
assert that which he can not know to be true, and that, too, 
when the probabilities are against his assertions? This he 
does, not only in Saul's individual case, but in the statement 
that at that time to offe^r sacrifice in the same sense was the 
privilege of every Israelite ; for this statement can not be made 
good by a single specification; and it is falsified by the fact 
that Elkanah, and the people in general, until disgusted by the 
priests at Shiloh, went to those priests, wicked as they were, 
to present their offerings. 

(2) It is said of David: 

When lie brought up the ark to Jerusalem he wore the priestly 
ephod, offered sacrifices in person, and, to make it quite clear that 
in all this he assumed a priestly function, he blessed the people as 
a priest in the name of Jehovah— II. Sam. vi. 14, 18 (0. T., 274). 

Here, again, it is assumed without the slightest warrant, 
that the sacrifices offered by David were offered by his own 
hand as a priest. On the contrary, Abiathar the priest was a 
constant companion of David, and had been ever since he 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 153 

joined his company in the cave of Adullaiu, and the author of 
Chronicles says expressly that both he and Zadok the priest 
were with him when he moved the ark (I. Chron. xv. 11, 12). 
In this whole procedure the law was Ofhserved ; for tlie ark was 
carried by its own bars on the shoulders of Levites, and the 
writer adds, "as Moses commanded according to the word of 
Jehovah" (verse 15). Critics very conveniently sot this tes- 
timony aside by denying the truthfulness of the account; but 
this is only another example of applying historical criticism 
by denying history. 

The ephod which he wore on this occasion was the linen 
outer garment, perfectly plain, of the common priest. It was 
the simplest garment which he could wear, and involved the 
laying aside of his royal apparel. It incurred the displeasure 
of Michal to see the king so humbly attired, and she exclaimed 
to him, "How glorious was the king of Israel to-day who uncov- 
ered himself to-day in the eyes of the handmaids of his serv- 
ants." He answered her, "It was before Jehovah ... I will 
be yet more vile than this, and will be base in my own sight" 
(II. Sam. vi. 20-28). He was not assuming the office of a 
priest, but was adopting their simple vesture in order to hum- 
ble himself before Jeliovah. As to his blessing the people in 
the name of Jehovah, it is absurd to represent this as a priest- 
ly function, as though a pious king might not call for God^s 
blessing on his subjects. The critic's thought seems to have 
been born of the sacerdotalism of some modern churches, which 
in their exaltation of their clergy have fallen upon the idea 
that only a clergyman can properly pronounce the benediction 
at the close of a religious meeting. 

6. The Priesthood of David's Sons. Robertson Smith 

continues : 

In II. Sam. viii. 18 we read that David's sons were priests. This 
statement, so incredible on the traditionary theory, has led our Eng- 
lish version, following the Jewish tradition of the Targum, to change 
the sense, and substitute "chief rulers" for priests. But the Hebrew 
word means priests, and can not mean anything else (275). 

If this is true, and if the woixi "priest" is here used in 
its ordinary sense, then unquestionably we have here one 



154 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

instance of a violation of the Levitical law. Whetliea* such a 
violation was to our Englis-h translators so "incredible" that 
tbey changed the sense, is another question. It is easy to 
imagine that they had not discovered what Professor Smith 
so positively asserts, that "the Hebrew word can mean nothing 
else." They may have supposed that, while priest is its pri- 
mary meaning, it might have a secondary meaning, or it might 
he used as an honorary title. The bold assertion that it can 
mean nothing else, can scarcely be made truthfully of any 
word in any lang-uage. Take, for instance, the Hebrew word 
for father, which occurs about the same number of times with 
the w^ord for priest. If you say that it means father, and "can 
mean nothing else," then you will make the prophet Elijah the 
father of Elisha ; for the latter on one occasion addresses the 
former as "my father" (II. Kings ii. 12). If our translators, 
through fear lest some readers might suppose that this was the 
actual relationship between the two prophets, had ventured 
to substitute for this complimentary use of the word "father" 
the word "leader," or "master," and some modern critic, with 
a pet theory to support, had come forward with the affirmation 
that father and son Avas their relationship, and that the trans- 
lators had thought this so incredible that they had changed 
the sense, we should have a case parallel to the one made out 
by Professor Smith. Or suppose that a Latin scholar, reading 
medieval Latin, should find that the clergy of the Eoman 
Catholic Church of Eome were married men with children? 
He would miss the truth as Smith does in saying that David's 
sons were officiating priests. Yet again, should a Frenchman 
see a list of all the colonels in Kentucky, and find thean to be 
■Q.Ye hundred in number, he might argue after Smith that a 
colonel means a cormnander of a regiment of soldiers, and it 
can mean nothing else ; therefore the militia force of Kentucky 
includes -B.Ye hundred regiments, or ^ve hundred thousand men. 
While Professor Smith is so confident as to the meaning 
of this wo-rd, I find another competent Hebrew scholar who 
represents it differently. He is the author of the Book of 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 155 

Chronicles; and Hebrew was his vernacular. He had the 
Book of Samuel before him when he wrote, and he copied 
much from it; but when he came to the list of David's chief 
officers, instead of rendering the last clause, "David's sons 
were priests," he expresses it, "the sons of David were chief 
about the king" (I. Chron. xviii. 17; cf. II. Sam. viii. 18). 
Xow, this was either a deliberate change of tlie text, of which 
the author of a sacred book ought not to be suspected, or it 
was a free rendering intended to express the meaning of the 
word "priest" in that connection. It shows that the word is 
employed in an unusual sense. The priests under the Levit- 
ical law were an order of nobility, having hereditary privi- 
leges not shared by others, and as there was no other rank or 
title of nobility in the early years of Israel by which the sons 
of the king might be distinguished, it was but natural to give 
them the honorary title of priest. If the people knew that 
they were not priests in reality, they would understand the 
title, as Romanists now do the title "Father," and as Ken- 
tuckians do the title "Colonel." 

7. Solomon's Career. Continuing his argument. Profes- 
sor Smith says: 

But in fact the Book of Kings expressly recognizes the worship 
of the high places as legitimate up to the time when the temple was 
built— I. Kings iii. 2, seq. (i&., 275). 

Professor Smith ought not to have made this stateanent; 
for it flatly contradicts the passage which he cites, but does 
not quote. The passage reads thus: "Only the people sacri- 
ficed in high places, because there was no house built for the 
name of Jehovah until those days. And Solomon loved Jeho- 
vah, walking in the statutes of David his father. Only he 
sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places." Here the 
praise of Solomon for loving God and walking in the statutes 
of his father, is discoimted by the fact that he sacrificed and 
burnt incense in the high places ; and the remark that the peo- 
ple did the same is introduced by "only," to indicate that in 
this they did wrong. The Book of Kings, then, instead of 
expressly recognizing this worship as legitimate till the tem- 



156 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

•pie was built, expressly condemns it, and this Professor Smitli 
would have known had he read carefully the text befo're he 
referred to it to prove the opposite. This method of citing the 
Scriptures is characteristic of this class of critics. 

One would naturally suppose that, when we find Solomcm 
constructing his temple, placing in it the ark of the covenant 
and the materials of the dismantled tent of meeting, and esper- 
cially when he inaugurated the elaborate temple ritual, 
there would be an end at last to the denial that the Levitical 
law was yet in existence. But the same confident denials 
assail us here as in the previous history. Ro'bertson Smith 
utters the voice of his fellow critics wheai he raises the ques- 
tion and answers it in the negative, "Was the founding of the 
temple on Zion undertaken as part of an attempt to give prac- 
tical force to the Levitical system?" He declares that "the 
whole life of Solomon answers this question in the negative" 
(259). Let us see with what kind of evidence this startling 
proposition is supported: 

1. He not only did not abolish the local sanctuaries, but he built 
new shrines, which stood till the time of Josiah, for the gods of the 
foreign wives whom, like his father David (II. Sam. iii. 3), he mar- 
ried against the Pentateuchal law — I. Kings xi.; II. Kings xxiii. 13 
(259, 260). 

If the proposition was that Solomon violated some of the 
statutes of the law, the facts here stated would be. in point. 
That he did so needs no argument; it is set forth as emphat- 
ically by the author of the Book of Kings as it is by Roibertson 
Smith. But how does the fact that he thus violated the law 
show that his founding of the temple was not an attempt to 
give practical force to the law? Many a man has erected 
buildings for the worship of God, and has failed to worship 
him, or has worshiped him very imperfectly. But the state- 
ment of facts here made demands modification. The only 
"local sanctuary" named in the text at which Solomon offered 
worship was the one at Gibeon, where the old tent of meeting 
then stood, with the brazen altar built by Moses in front of it; 
and this he moved into the "chambers" of the temple after 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 157 

the latter was built. xVfter the erection of the temple there is 
no evidence that either he or his subjects worshiped Jehovah 
at such places during his reign. His only departure from the 
law in this respect was the erection of heathen altars on the 
high place in front of Jerusalem, for the accommodation of his 
heathen wives. This is treated in the text as an apostasy from 
the system of worship represented by the temple. The same 
is true of his marriage with women belonging to the tribes with 
which Israel had been forbidden to intermarry. His commis- 
sion of these sins, even the worst of them, is no proof that the 
service continually observed in the temple was any other than 
that prescribed in the Levitical law. K^othing has been more 
common in the history of religion than strictness of ritual serv- 
ice accompanied, in the same individual, by disregard of the 
weightier matters of the law. 

2. And when the Book of Deuteronomy describes what a king of 
Israel must not be, it reproduces line for line the features of the court 
of Solomon— Deut. xvii. 16, seq. (260). 

This is true of just three features of his court — ^his mul- 
tiplication of horses, of wives, and of gold and silver. If it 
were proved that Deuteronomy was written after Solomon's 
reign, this would account for the correspondence ; and if it were 
proved that it was written before his reign, this would account 
for it ; for, as we have said before, Moses knew by the example 
of the Pharaohs that the maintenance of a large cavalry force 
was a disastrous drain upon the resources of a nation, and a 
constant temptation to war; that a great multiplication of 
wives, such as enabled Rameses II. to have sixty-nine sons and 
seventy daughters, was almost equally disastrous; and he knetw 
that the attempt to amass great hoards of gold and silver would 
ordinarily involve extreme oppression of the people. In mak- 
ing laws, then, to govern the future king, should there ever be 
one, his natural good sense, even without the aid of inspiration, 
would lead him to say just what is said in Deuteronomy. As 
the coincidence, then, is adequately accounted for on either 
hypothesis, it is a fallacy of which scientific critics ought to be 
ashamed, to use it as proof of either. 



158 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

3. The two brazen pillars which stood at the porch (I. Kings vi). 
21) were not different from the forbidden macceda, or from the twin 
pillars that stood in front of Phoenician and Syrian sanctuaries (ib.). 

How could Professor Smith know this? Did pillars or 
columns about all temples have the same s-ignificance ? We 
know that tho'se called ohelisks, which stood by Egyptian tem- 
ples, were lined with inscriptions in praise of the gods wo'r^ 
shiped there, or of the kings who erected the temples ; and wo 
know that the Doric, Ionian or Corinthian columns connected 
with Greek temples had no such significance^ but were purely 
oinamental. How was it with these two brazen pillars before 
the temple ? There was not a letter of inscription on them. 
They were, from their nature and form, highly ornamental. 
Their combined names, Jachin and Boaz, meant, "He shall 
establish it in strength," and had reference, no doubt, tO' the 
firm establishment of God's worship in that house. What was 
there in this forbidden by the Levitical law, or the law in Deu- 
teronomy? The argument would have been far more plausi- 
ble if it had been directed against the two gigantic images of 
cherubim that stood in the oracle, overshadowing the ark with 
their outstretched wings. That device has some semblance to 
a violation of the Second Commandment; yet it showed how 
perfectly Solomon understood that commandment, as not for- 
bidding the making of images except when they were^ intended 
as objects of worship. 

4. I. Kings ix. 25 can hardly bear any other sense than that the 
king officiated at the altar in person three times a year. That implies 
an entire neglect on his part of the strict law of separation between 
the legitimate priesthood and laymen (i&.). 

That text reads thus : "Three times in a year did Solomon 
offer burnt offerings upon the altar which he built unto Jeho- 
vah, burning incense therewith upon the altar that was before 
Jehovah." How does this prove that he "officiated at the altar 
in person" ? The very next sentence is, "And King Solomon 
made a navy of ships." Would a scientific critic say, This 
can hardly bear any other sense than that the king made these 
ships in person ? I think not. Then, why stultify himself by 
applying to words connected with offerings a rule of interpreta- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 159 

tion which is absurd if applied to the same words in other con- 
nections ? Elkanah, the father of Samuel, came up to- Shiloh 
from year to year "to sacrifice unto Jehovah" (I. Sam. i. 3) ; 
why not say that he also officiated at the altar ? The obvious 
answer is that the exigencies of criticism did not call for such a 
perversion in the case of Elkanah, but they did in the case 
of Solomon. 

There is still another view of Solomon's career which wo 
must not omit. The specifications just considered are the 
proof that the whole life of Solomon answers in the negative 
the question whether his founding of the temple was an attempt 
to enforce the Levitical system. But is the whole life of Solo- 
mon involved in these specifications ? Why is it forgotten thai- 
he devoted seven years of his reign, vast sums of money, and 
the labor of 180,000 of his subjects, to the erection of a magnif- 
icent temple suitable only for the Levitical system of worship ? 
For what form of worship was that temple divided into the 
holy and the most holy places, with the ark of the covenant in 
the latter, and the altar of incense', the candlesticks of gold, 
and the table of shewbread in the former, unless it was for the 
observance of the rites prescribed in the Levitical law? Why 
the altar of burnt offerings in front, and the lavers, and the 
inner court, except for the purpose of complying with the same 
law ? And why did Solomon offer sacrifices on the altar three 
times every year, corresponding to the threet annual festivals 
appointed in the Levitical law ? Why did he, after the erection 
and dedication of the temple, refrain from offering sacrifices at 
any other spot until, in his old age, and under the persuasions 
of his many w4ves, he was induced to accommodate them by the 
erection of altars to their se^^eral gods? Herein lies, not the 
whole of Solomon's life, but an im'mensely greatCT part of it 
than in any of the departures from the Levitical law of which 
he was guilty. It would be difficult to conceive a more erro- 
neous representation of the life of a great king than this that 
we have considered. And this is Jiisiorical criticism — a criti- 
cism which sets aside history to make good its conclusions. 



160 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

8. Evidence from Foredgn Guards in the Temple. It is 
asserted hj our critics that the body-guard of foreigners which 
from the time of David was kept by the kings of Judah^ were 
admitted within the temple, and took the same part in the serv- 
ice which the Levitical law reistricted to the Levites ; and this 
is held as proof conclusive that this law had not yet been given 
Robertson Smith expresses it thus : 

As long as Solomon's temple stood, and even after the reforms ot 
Josiah, the function of keeping the ward of the sanctuary, which by 
Levitical law is strictly confined to the house of Levi, on pain of death 
to the stranger who comes nigh (Num. iii. 38), devolved upon uncircum- 
cised foreigners, who, according to the law, ought never to have been 
permitted to set foot within the courts of the temple (i&., 263). 

In another place he styles this "the admission of uncircum- 
cised strangers as ministers in the sanctuary" (265). Had 
^ve not already found in his book so many misrepresentations 
of Scripture, we should be astonished at such a statement from 
the pen of such a scholar. Let us see what the facts in this 
case ara 

It is not pretended that this irregularity was permitted by 
either David or Solomon. The first instance cited is under 
Rehoboam. Smith says., "The guard accompanied the king 
when he visited the sanctuary." The text says (I. Kings xiv. 
28) : "As often as the king went into* the house of Jehovah, the 
guard bore them [the shields of brass which he had made after 
Shishak had taken away the shields of gold], and brought them 
back into the guard chamber." It is not here said, nor is it 
implied, that the guard "went into the house of Jehovah." 
The Sultan of Turkey is accompanied by a military guard as 
often as he goes to the mosque ; but when he enters the mosque 
the guard remains outside. How does any man know that this 
was not the case with Reho'boam's guard ? 

Leaping from this passage in I. Kings to II. Kin^s xi. 19, 
Professor Smith's next proof is the fact that "the temple gate 
leading to the palace was called the gate of the foot-guards." 
What of that ? Doe« it prove that the foot-guards passed in 
and out through this gate, or is it just as probable that it was 
so called because they habitually halted and waited at this gate 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 161 

while the king was worshiping inside ? The name of the gate 
does not imply that the guards ever passed through it. Again, 
it is asserted that this royal body-guard "was also the temple 
guard, going in and out in courses every week," and that when 
the priest Jehoiada crowned the young king Jehoash, he "was 
surrounded by the foreign body-guard, who formed a circle 
about the altar and the front of the shrine, in the holiest part 
of the temple court." 

This is all based on what is said about the Carites ("cap- 
tains" in A. V.) in the account of the crowning of Jehoash 
by Jehoiada. But the Carites, generally supposed to be the 
foreign body-guard, are mentioned only twice in the proceed- 
ings, and in both instances they are expressly distinguished 
from the temple guard. In the first instance it is said that 
Jehoiada sent and fetched the captains over hundreds, of the 
Carites and of the guard, and brought them into the house of 
Jehovah, and made a covenant with them, and took an oath of 
them in the house of Jehovah, and showed them the king's son 
(verse 4). In the second instance it is said of Jehoiada, "He 
took the captains over hundreds, and the Carites, and the 
guard, and all the people of the land; and they brought down 
the king from the house of Jehovah, and came by the 
way of the gate of the guard, unto the king's house" 
(verse 19). In both of these instances the Carites and 
the guard are two distinct bodies — as distinct as each is 
from "all the people." To say, then, that the Carites 
w^ere at this time the temple guard, is to speak not. ondy 
without authority, but in contradiction to the text. This 
perversion of the text is the more inexcusable from tha 
fact that the previous history informs us unmistakably of 
whom the temple guard consisted. It was the section of 
Levites who were set apart to this service by David under tho 
name of porters (gate-keepers). A full account of their 
appointment, and of the rules governing their service, is given 
in I. Chron. xxvi. 1-19. I suppose that Professor Smith and 
his critical predecessors failed to recognize the real temple 



162 THB AUTHORSHIP OF 

guard, because of having rejected as untrue this passage in 
Chronicles. If so, this is but another instance of setting aside 
a piece of unimpeached history in order to save a theory. 

In the first of these two instances the Carites were among 
those brought into the house of Jehovah, and to whom Jehoiada 
showed the king ; but it does not appear whether this was in the 
outer court, into which Gentiles were admitted, or the inner 
court, into which only the circumcised were admitted. If the 
latter, then there was an infraction of the law on this subject^ 
provided the Carites were uncircumcised. If they were cir- 
cumcised (and their long continuance in the service of the 
kings of Judah would naturally lead to their being circum- 
cised), they had the same right of admission into the inner 
court as the Jews. If they were not, Jehoiada, might well 
excuse himself for admitting them there when the life of the 
king, his own life, and the lives of all who entered into the 
covenant, were at stake. Indeed, the continuance of the house 
of David on the throne, according to God's promise, was at 
stake, as all of his male offspring in the line of inheritance, 
except this child, had been slaughtered by Athaliah. In such 
a death-struggle a man of Jehoiada's decision and courage 
could not fail to brush aside any matter of mere ritual that 
stood in his way. If, then, all that is logically assumed by 
our critics in reference to his use of the Carites on this occa- 
sion were true, and if the law excluding foreigners from the 
inner court was in his hand, still there can be no doubt that 
Jehoiada would have proceeded as he did. The incident fur- 
nishes not the slightest ground for' denying his knowledge of 
the Levitical law. 

In this connection Professor Smith mentions, as further 
evidence that the Levitical law was not yet known, the fact 
that neither the sin-offering nor the trespass-offering is once 
mentioned before the captivity, and that "sin-money and tres- 
pass-money" were given to the priests. He pronounces this 
last custom "nothing but a gross case of simony" (263 f.). 
Here he betrays an unaccountable ignoirance of both the his- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 163 

tory and the law. For whence came the "sin-money and the 
trespass-money" except from the sin-offerings and the tres- 
pass-offedngs ? WTiat is the meaning of tlie very text on 
which his assertions are based ; viz. : "The money for the 
guiltrofferings, and the money for the sin-offerings, was not 
brought into the house of Jehovah: it was the- priests' " (II. 
Kings xii. 16) ? This is a mention of these two offerings as 
existing before the captivity, and in admitting what the writer 
of Kings says about the use made of the money, our critic is 
estopped from denying what he says about the souro© o(f the 
money. And what does the law say about this money ? It ex- 
pressly provides that when a man committed a trespass in holy 
things, he should bring to the priest a ram for a guilt-offering, 
and one-fifth of its value in money, which was to be the priest's 
(Lev. V. 14-16). It further provides that when the trespass 
was against a fellow man, he was to make restitution in full, 
and add a fifth part. This fifth part was to go to the injured 
person, if alive, and to his heirs, if he was dead ; but if no heirs 
were known, it was given to the priest who officiated. Here 
are now two instances in which "sin-monty and trespass- 
money" was to be given to the priests, and there is not a single 
provision of the law requiring it, as Professor Smith asserts, to 
go into the Lord's treasury. 

In the same connection, strange to say, our critic brings for- 
ward as proof of his thesis, the sacrilege committed by Ahaz 
in setting up an idolatrous altar in the house of the Lord, and 
the ready compliance of the priest Urijah in having it made 
and set up under the king's order. He must have felt hard 
pressed for evidence when he resorted to such as this. Why 
did he not bring forward the worship of false gods by Ahaz 
and tlie sacrifice of kis oa\ti son, as proof that the Ten Com- 
mandments were unknoA\Ti at that time ? It would have been as 
logical. And so it would be to bring up the infamous crimes 
of the apostate Julian to prove that the Christian religion was 
not yet known in his day. The sacrilege committed by Ahaz 
consisted, in part, in the changes which he made about the 



16^: THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

temple in violatiom of the Levitical law, in accordance with 
which the temple service had been inaugurated. As to the 
priest Urijah, he is not the only priest, whether O'f the Jewish 
or any otlier religion, who has violated law at the command 
of a wicked king rather than lose* his place or his head. 

Similar to this is the argument based on Solomon's deposi- 
tion of Abiathar as high priest and the substitution of Zadok. 
Professor Smith styles it "subornation of the priesthood to the 
palace carried so far that Abiathar is deposed from the priest- 
hood, and Zadok, who was not of the priestly family of Shiloh, 
set in his place, by a mere fiat of King Solomon" (266 f.). 
But Abiathar had been guilty of treason, the penalty of which 
was death, and deposition from office was a merciful commutar 
tiou. Solomon said to him: "Thou art worthy of death: but 
I will not at this time put thee to death, because thou bearedst 
the ark of the Lord God before David my father, and because 
thou wast ajfflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted" (I. 
Kings ii. 26). As to Zadok, it is true, as Professor Smith 
says, that he was not of the priestly family of Shiloh, which 
family, in accordance with the prediction of Samuel, had now 
been deprived of the priesthood, but he did belong to another 
branch of the family of Aaron, being descended from Kohath 
(I. Chron. vi. 1-12). It is constantly affirmed by destructive 
critics that Zadok was not of the priestly family ; but, in order 
to do so, they set aside his genealogy in Chronicles, our only 
source of infomnation on the subject (266, note). 

In the paragraph last quoted, Professor Smith falls into the 
common error of supposing that the Israelites were forbidden 
to intermarry with foreigners. He says : "The exclusive sanc- 
tity of the nation wa:s not understood in a Levitical sense; for 
not only Solomon, but David himself, intermarried witli 
heathen nations" (266). This prohibition had reference only 
to the tribes of Canaan (Ex. xxxiv. 11-16; Deut. vii. 1-3); 
consequently the people were left as free to intermarry with 
other nations as they had been before the law was given. 
Indeed, the Book of Deuteronomy contains an express provi- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 165 

sion for the marriage of Hebrews to foreign women takeoi cap- 
tive in war, which were usually reduced to slavery (xxi. 10- 
14). David, therefore, did not violate the Levitical law in 
marrying, though Solomon did (I. Kings xi. 1, 2). If it is 
still argued that Solomon's course in this respect proves that 
he was ignorant of the Levitical law, you may just as well 
argue that his participation in idolatry is proof that he knew 
nothing of the Decalogue, or even of the First Commandment. 
It is a ne^v thing under the sun to argue that violations of a 
law by lawless men furnish proof that the law was not known 
to exist. This is ^^scientific criticism" ! 

9. The Toleration of High Places. The last of Professor 
Smith's specifications from the historical books which we shall 
notice is expressed in the f ollomng words : 

The priests of the popular high places were recognized priests of 
Jehovah, and, instead of being punished as apostates, they received 
support and a certain status in the temple (xxiii. 9). We now see the 
full significance of the toleration of the high places by the earlier 
kings of Judah. They were not known to be any breach of the relig- 
ious constitution of Israel (259). 

What is here said of the priests of the high places is true 
only of so many of them as were priests of Jehovah; that is, 
descendants of Aaron. 'No heathen priests were ever admitted 
to support or to a ^^status in the temple." The statement that 
priests of Jehovah who had officiated in the high places were 
not punished by Josiah is a contradiction of the very passage 
(xxiii. 9) cited in support of it. It reads: "Nevertheless 
the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of 
Jehovah in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened bread among 
their brethren." This, as we showed in a former discussion 
of this passage, was the Levitical law for all priests who were 
disqualified for the functions of their office. Josiali dealt 
with them as the law required sons of Aaron to be dealt 
with who were defective in bodily parts. If this was not pun- 
ishing them as apostates, it was inflicting on them the penalty 
of the law, and the only penalty which the law prescribed for 
disqualified priests. 



166 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

But, in proof of his piroposition, Professor Smith refers 
to the toleration of the high places by the earlier kings of Ju- 
dah, and he especially cites the exatmple of Jehoash in tolera- 
ting them while he was directed by the high priest Jehoiada 
(II. Kings xii. 2, 3). He may as well have said, tolerated by 
Jehoiada ; for as Jehoash began his reign at seven years of age, 
Jehoiada had complete control of affairs for at least ten or 
twelve years. But that faithful priest had enough on his 
hands without undertaking what King Hezekiah undertook, 
but failed to accomplish. When Athaliah slew, as she thought, 
every male of the royal family in order to secure to herself 
an undisputed reign, Jehoiada and his wife, at the imminent 
peril of their Ha^cs, concealed the infant Jehoash, and kept him 
concealed till the day that he brought him out and crowned 
him king. During these six years his own life and that of 
the child both hung upon a thread that was liable to break 
at any moment. And when, at last, he had crowned the child, 
and brought about the death of Athaliah, it would be idle to 
suppose that he was out of danger. If Athaliah had any 
friends, and she certainly had among those who had followed 
her in the worship of Baal, they necessarily looked upon Je- 
hoiada as a usurper, if not an assassin, and might be suspected 
constantly of conspiring against him. Had he added to these 
enemies all the worshipers at the high places, together with. 
the priests who served at these altars and gained their liveli- 
hood by it, he and the young king might have perished after 
all. Had the latter been slain in his boyhood, the house of 
David would have been brought to an end, and the promise 
of God to David would have been broken. Well might the 
good priest, then, be contented with what he did accomplish 
until the king whom he had saved could take the reins of 
government into his o^vn hands. 

Before we can accept the closing statement of the extract 
last made from Professor Smith, that until the time of Josiah 
the high places were not known to be any breach of the relig- 
ious constitution of Israel, two questions must be satisfactorily 
answered: Pirst, Why does the author of the Book of Kings 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 167 

reproach every good king of Judah, from Asa to Hezekiali, for 
not destroying the high places? The answer usually given, 
that this author wrote after the Book of Deuteronomy was dis- 
covered, and throws back what he learned from that book into 
the earlier history, is to prefer a charge which has no shadow 
of proof. It is to bring this charge against an author who 
had a better opportimity to know the facts in the case than 
has any modern critic. On the critical hypotliesis of the late 
date of Deuteronomy, this author would have known whence 
he obtained his own knowledge that the high places were un- 
lawful, and he would have known perfectly, what the modern 
critic can only conjecturally assert, that the historical docu- 
ments anterior to the discovery of Deuteronomy which he used 
in compiling his history contained not a hint of unlawfulness 
in the high places ; and to have written about them as he does 
would have been deliberately falsifying the record. If the 
evident honesty of the author is not sufficient to protect him 
from such a charge, he should be at least protected by the 
absence of any motive for such perversity. Xo critic has yet 
pointed out, even conjecturally, such a motive. Until one is 
found, and until its existence in the mind of the author is dem- 
onstrated, let the tongue of detraction be silenced. 

The second question to be answered by those who deny that 
the high places were known to be unlawful till the Book of 
Deuteronomy was brought out by Hilkiah, is this: Why, then, 
did King Hezekiah, who died seventy-five years earlier, make 
an honest and persistent effort to destroy them all ? The au- 
thor of Kings answers this question indirectly, but explicitly, 
when he says: "He did that which was right in the eyes of 
Jehovali, according to all that his father David had done. He 
removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down 
the Asherah: and he brake in pieces the brazen serpent that 
Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel 
did bum incense to it ; and he called it Xehushtan [a piece of 
brass]. He trusted in Jehovah the God of Israel; so that 
after him there was none like him among all the kings of 



168 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Judah, nor among them that were before him'' (II. Kings xviii. 
1-5). Here the answer is given and repeated, that the rea- 
son why he removed the high places, and broke np other abuses 
of a similar character, was because he trusted in Jehovah, 
doing that which was right in his eyes. Undoubtedly, then, 
unless we here again charge the author of Kings with false rep- 
resentation, Hezekiah knew that the high places were not right 
in the eyes of Jehovah ; and this he could not have known with- 
out Jehovah's law on the subject. 

We have now reviewed the evidence for the late date of 
Deuteronoany which destructive critics claim to find in the older 
historical books. We have fo^und none that is really such, but 
much of the so-called evidence the bearing of which is in the 
opposite direction. In view of the extreme fallaciousness of 
these arguments, it is startling to read at the close of the lec- 
ture from which we have quoted, this statement: 

In truth the people of Jehovah never lived under the law, and 
the dispensation of divine grace never followed its pattern, till Israel 
had ceased to be a nation. The history of Israel refuses to be meas- 
ured by the traditional theory as to the origin and function of the 
Pentateuch (0. T., 277). 

This stateanent would be unaccountable but for the well- 
known ease with which acute minds, when committed to a the»- 
ory, can deceive themselves. 

§8. Evidence from the Eaely Prophets. 

It is argued with the greatest confidence by destructive 
critics that the prophets who lived and wrote before the Baby- 
lonian exile, betray such ignorance of the Levitical law as dem- 
onstrates its non-existence, and such ignorance of the distinctive 
laws of Deuteronomy as demonstrates its non-existence till its 
discovery by Hilkiah. W. Robertson Smith, following close 
in the track of Wellhausen, presents the argument so elabo- 
rately that we shall let him be, in the main, our guida His 
proposition, in its briefest and most comprehensive form, is 
this : 

The theology of the prophets before Ezekiel has no place for 
priestly sacrifice and ritual (0. T., 295). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 169 

He does not hold tliat tlie prophets had ''any objection to 
sacrifice and ritual in the abstract," but he claims that "they 
deny that these things are of positive divine institution, or have 
any part in the scheme on which Jehovah's grace is adminis- 
tered in Israel. Jehovah, tliey say, has not enjoined sacrifice" 
{lb.). Wellhausen goes further, and says: "The prophet 
(Hosea) had never once dreamed of the possibility of cultus 
being made the subject of Jehovah's directions" (quoted by 
Baxter in Sanctuary and Sacrifice, 179). Again Wellhausen 
says: "According to tlie universal opinion of the pre-exilic 
period, the cultus is indeed of very old (to tJbe people), very 
sacred usage, but not a Mosaic institution" {ib.^ 180). 

In order to make good these assertions, our critics begin 
with Elijah and Elisha, and pass on to the writing prophets, 
Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah and Jereoniah, in order. 

1. Elijah and Elisha, Robertson Smith says that Elijah 
and Elisha "had no quarrel with the sanctuaries of their na- 
tion ;" meaning the sanctuaries of the calf -worship at Bethel 
and Dan. And he gives this as proof that neither the Levit- 
ical code, nor the code of Deuteronomy, was known in the 
northern kingdom {Prophets, 113). It is true that among the 
very few words quoted from these two prophets there is no al- 
lusion to these sanctuaries, but the paucity of these quota- 
tions makes this statement appear reckless. Moreover, if 
the argument is good, it is suicidal to him who offers it; 
for just below, on the same page, he says: "It is safe, 
therefore, to conclude that whatever ancient laws may have 
had currency in a written form must be sought in other 
parts of the Pentateiich, particularly in the book of the cove- 
nant (Ex. xxi.-xxiii.), which the Pentateuch itself presents as 
an older code than those of Deuteronomy and the Levitical 
legislation;" but this code, as well as the Second Command- 
ment of the Decalogue which preceded it, forbade such idol- 
atry as the calf-worship, and our critic's argument would prove 
that these also were unknown in Israel. The argument is a 
boomerang. 



170 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

If it is true that these two prophets, and especially Eli- 
jah, had no quarrel with the sanctuaries referred to, there is 
a very good reason for it that involves no such conclusion as 
Professor Smith has drawn to his own confusion. We are 
told by the historian that Ahab, "as if it had been a light 
thing to walk in the sins of Jerobo>am, the son of ISTebat, took 
to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-baal, king of the Zidoni- 
ans, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him" (I. Kings 
xvi. 30, 31). Comparatively speaking, it was "a light thing; ' 
for Baal-woirship was the most abominable form of idolatry 
ever known in Israel. N^ot only so, but it was cultivated in 
AhaVs reign to such an extent that all other forms of wor- 
ship were thrown into complete obscurity. Four hundred and 
fifty prophets of Baal were fed at public expense, and all the 
prophets of Jehovah were slain or compelled to find safety in 
hiding. It was this gigantic power, backed by the authority 
of king and queen and aristocracy, that Elijah assailed sin- 
gle-handed. The calf-worship was, in his estimation, as in 
that of Ahab, a very "light thing," not to be thought of till 
this fiercer and more powerful foe was disarmed. When a 
Western hunter is fighting hand to paw a mountain bear, he 
pays little attention to a small dog that may be snapping at 
his heels. When SauFs kingdom was invaded by the Philis- 
tines, he very quickly turned his back upon David's little band, 
and hastened to repel the more dangerous foe. There were 
perhaps a thousand crimes being committed in Israel which 
Elijah might have denounced ; and his silence about them may 
as well be used as proof that there was no law against them; 
but Professor Smith is himself able to see that this would 
be nonsense. While fighting the one great fight, on the re- 
sult of which the very life of the nation depended, it would 
have been folly for Elijah to divide his energies by turning 
them against subordinate evils. While the American Union 
was fighting for existence during the great Civil War, it paid 
no attention to Maximilian's attempt to establish a monarchy 
in Mexico. Was this because the Monroe doctrine was not 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 171 

yet in existence? So some future Robertson Smith may ar- 
gue. 

Wellhausen, whom Smith follows in the main, but some- 
times contradicts, declares that Elijah and Elisha were '^ac- 
tual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did 
not think of protesting against his pictorial representation'^ 
{Prol., 283 ).^'^ This is to assume that they knew nothing of 
the DecalogTie and the book of the covenant, while Smith says, 
as quoted above, that they did. It is, moreover, an assertion 
that these prophets were "actual champions" of something that 
they never said a word about. One might as truthfully say 
that Wellhausen is an actual champion of the free and unlim- 
ited coinage of silver in the United States, and prove it by his 
Prolegomena, in which he says nothing about it. 

But Wellhausen attempts to support his startling assertion 
by arguing that if it were not so, Elijah at Mount Carmel, 
instead of the alternative, "If Baal is God, serve him, and 
if Jehovah is God, serve him," would have propo'sed choice 
between three, Jehovah, Baal and the calf! What we have 
said above about the complete predominance of Baal-worship 
at the time, shows that this would have been ridiculous. As 
well demand of the spectators of the supposed fight between the 
man and the bear, which will win, the man, the bear, or the 
little dog? The little dog, as the boys out West would say, 
"isn't in it ;" and the calf "wasn't in it" in the reign of Ahab. 

2. The Prophet Amos. Of this prophet the same assertion 
Is made as of Elijah and Elisha: "Amos," says Robertson 
Smith, "never speaks of the golden calves as the sin of the 
northern sanctuaries, and he has only one or two allusions tO' the 
worship of false gods or idolatrous symbols" {Prophets, 140). 

This statement is true, but as respects the question at issue 
it is evasive and misleading. It is true that Amos never men- 

"Kuenen inclines to the same preposterous assumption, but he 
expresses himself more cautiously: "Their attitude toward the bull- 
worship was not the same as that of their successors: rather must 
we infer from the narratives concerning them and the kings who 
ruled under their influence, that they either approved of it, or, at all 
events, did not oppose it" {Rel. of Israel, I. 221). 



172 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tions the golden calves at all, and of course he does not speak 
of them ^^as the sin of the northern sanctuaries.'' But he; 
does what amounts to the same thing. He denounces in un- 
qualified terms the sin of the worship paid those calves. He 
says: ''Hear ye, and testify against the house of Jacoh, saith 
the Lord God, the God of hosts. For in the day that I shall 
visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will also visit 
the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off,, 
and fall to the ground" (iii. 13, 14). The altars of Bethell 
were the altars on which sacrifice was offered to the golden 
calf. Herein lay the sin. The calf was nothing but the; 
image of a dumb brute, and the making of it was in itself no 
sin. The sin was in worshiping it, and this was done by- 
means of the altar. The altar was then the object for the 
prophet to denounce in denouncing the worship of the calf. 

Arain the prophet exclaims: "Gome to Bethel, and trans- 
gress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; and bring your 
sacrifices every morning, and your tithes every three days ; and 
offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened: for 
this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith Jehovah'' (iv. 4, 
5). What severer satire co^uld be uttered against the whole of 
the worship at Bethel? The whole of it was transgression. 
The mention of Gilgal implies that the same unlawful worship 
had been extended to that place since Jeroboam first set up the 
calf at Bethel. 

Again the prophet exclaims: "Thus saith Jehovah to the 
house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: but seek not 
Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for 
Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to 
nought. Seek Jehovah, and ye shall live; lest he break out 
like fire in the house of Joseph, and there be none to quench it 
in Bethel" (v. 4-6). Here it is made as plain as words can 
make it, that the worship at these sanctuaries was not the wor- 
ship of Jehovah; and the people are entreated, as they would 
save themselves from burning, to stop seeking these sanctua- 
ries, and, in contrast therewith, to seek Jehovah. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMV. 17.1 

It is liere wcrtliy of reaiiark that Robertson Smith, while 
seeming to set forth the attitude of Amos to these sanctuaries, 
and making assertions in direct contradiction of these three 
passages, fails to quote a single word from them, either in his 
Prophets of Israel, or his Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 
We leave the i-^ader to account for this as best he can. No 
one can claim that the scientific, the inductive method, which 
takes into view all the facts before reaching a conclusion, is 
here observed. 

Once again we hear this same prophet, who never speaks 
against golden calves, addressing the worshipers before them 
in Jehovah's name, and exclaiming: ^^I hat©, I despise your 
feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 
Yea, though you oifer me your burnt offerings, and meal 
offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the 
peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the 
noise of thy songs ; for I w^ill not hear the melody of thy viols, 
but let judgement roll down like waters, and righteousness as 
a mighty stream" (v. 21-24). Thus, again, the whole system 
of worship at these sanctuaries, even those parts which are au- 
thorized in the Levitical law and in Deuteronomy when of- 
fered to Jehovah, is denounced as hateful to him. What a 
comment on Wellhausen's assertion that in fighting for the 
worship of Jehovah, Elijah was a champion of the Jehovah 
of Bethel and Dan ! And what a comment on the assertion of 
Robertson Smith, that Amos never speaks of the golden calves 
as the sin of the northern sanctuaries! 

Another passage in Amos our critics never fail to quote; 
yet it is not another passage, but the concluding part of the 
one last cited: ^^Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings 
forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel ? Yea, ye 
have borne Siccuth your king and Ohiun your images, the 
star of your god, which ye made to yourselves'' (v. 25, 26). 
The question here propounded naturally requires a negative 
answer, and upon this presumption Professor Smith remarks: 
"Amos proves God's indifference to ritual by reminding Israel 



174 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

that they offeTed no sacrifice and offerings to him in the wil- 
derness during those forty years of wanderings, which he else- 
where cites as a special proof of Jehovah's covenant grace" 
(294). This is to assume that Amos' question requires an 
absolute negative — that they offered no sacrifices at all in the 
wilderness. If we suppose this to be true, it falls far short 
of proving that God was indifferent to ritual ; for their failure 
might have been the result of willful disoibe-dience ; or it might 
have resulted from the want of animals. They certainly had 
but few animals, not even enough for a month's supply of food ; 
for when God told Moses that he would give the people flesh 
to eat for a month, the latter demanded, ^^ Shall flocks and herds 
he slain for them to suffice them ? or shall all the fish of the 
sea be gathered together for them to suffice them ?" (^um. xi. 
18-22). Moreover, they repeatedly murmured for flesh to eat, 
and this is sufficient proof that they could have brought few, 
if any, voluntary offerings to the altar. The record in Leviticus 
and lumbers indicates that when the tabernacle was standing, 
the regular morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb was kept 
up, but even this was omitted when the host was on the move 
day by day, and no regular encampment was formed. I^ow, 
Amos' question certainly admits of a comparative answer. The 
people may have said, when he propounded it, !N'o; we offere<l 
few, if any; and at the most we offered none in comparison 
with the multitude of victims that we are now bringing to the 
altars at Bethel, Gilgal, Dan and Beer-sheba. This is precisely 
the answer that would have been given if the contents of Levit- 
icus and Numbers were perfectly well known to the people, 
and on the same supposition it meets completely the demands 
of the prophet. He is showing the people that the present 
superfluity of their sacrifices was not needed in order to gain 
the favor of God, and he proves it by the comparative absence 
of these in the wilderness where God favored them more con- 
spicuously than ever before or since, and where all sacrifices 
were offered to Jehovah. 

We now see that the attempt to extract from the Book of 
Amos proof of the late date of the Levitical law and of the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 175 

Book of Deuteronomy is a failure ; and that, like the most of 
arguments in favor of a bad cause, it is characterized by sup- 
pressing some of tlie evidence and misconstruing the rest. We 
shall see, in another part of this work, very clear evidence that 
Amos did know the law, and that the image-wors'hiping Israel- 
ites wei'e) not ignoirant of it (Part II., §9.) 

3. Hosea. The allusions of Amos to the transgressions at 
Bethel, at Gilgal and Beer-sheba are equally explicit with those 
of Hosea ; and yet, while denying that the fo-rmer ever spoke 
in condemnation of the caJves that \vere worshiped at these 
places, it is freely admitted that the latter did. This is a 
freak of criticism that is hard to be understood; for the only 
difference is that Hosea names the calves, w^hile Amos makes 
unmistakable allusions to them. Robertson Smith says: 

There is no feature in Hosea's prophecy which distinguishes him 
from earlier prophets so sharply as his attitude to the golden calves, 
the local symbols of Jehovah adored in the northern sanctuaries. 
Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the traditional worship of their 
nation. Even Amos never speaks in condemnation of the calves; but 
in Hosea's teaching they suddenly appear as the very root of Israel's 
sin and misery. It is perfectly clear that in the time of Hosea, as in 
that of Amos, the oath of the worshipers at Gilgal and Bethel was 
"by the life of Jehovah" (iv. 15) ; the feasts of the Baalim were Jeho- 
vah's feasts (ii. 11, 13; ix. 5) ; the sanctuary was Jehovah's house (ix. 
4); the sacrifices, his offerings (viii. 13). But to Hosea's judgment 
this ostensible Jehovah worship was really the worship of other gods 
(iii. 1). With the calves Jehovah has nothing in common (Prophets, 
175, 176). 

On another page he says: 

Jehovah was not formally abjured for the Canaanite gods; but in 
the decay of all the nobler impulses of national life, he sank in popu- 
lar conception to their level; in essential character as well as in name, 
the calves of the local sanctuaries had become Canaanite Baalim, mere 
sources of the physical fertility of the land (174). 

If this is true, and if, as said above, in the tiime of Amos, 
as in that of Hosea, the popular worship was only "nominally" 
Jehovah w^orship, how shameful it is to represent Amos as 
having no condemnation for it, and Elijah as having no quarrel 
with it! The sudden appearance in Hosea of the calves as 
"the very root of Israel's sin and misery," is but the sudden 
appearance of gross injustice done by critics to these two ear- 
lier prophets. 



176 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

But, while freely admitting, and even insisting, that Hosea 
had a quarrel with the calves, our professor sees no evidence 
in this that Hosea had any knowledge of the law. He says: 
"If the prophecy of Hosea stood alone, it would be reasonable 
to think that this attack on the images of the popular religion 
was simply based on the Second Commandment." So it 
would, and so it does. '^But," says Smith, "when we con- 
trast it with the absolute silence of the earlier prophets, we 
can hardly accept this explanation as adequate" (176). He 
ought to have said. The absolute silence of Kobertson Smith; 
for, a,s I have plainly show^ed above, he is absolutely silent in 
regard to all those passages in Amos in which the latter calls 
the people to come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal and 
multiply transgression, etc. Amos speaks plainly enough, and 
often enough in his own book, but he is gagged and made ab- 
solutely silent on this point in W. Eobertson Smith's Proph- 
ets of Israel. 

Persisting in this denial, he says on the next page (177) : 

Hosea does not condemn the worship of the calves, because idols 
are forbidden by the law; he excludes the calves from the sphere of 
true religion, because the worship which they receive has no affinity 
to the true attitude of Israel to Jehovah. 

If Professor Smith were still alive, it would be pertinent 
to ask him how he knows all this. Where in the Book of Ho- 
sea does he give the latter reason for excluding the calves? 
And when we find a prophet of Jehovah who knew the second 
commandment of the law, as he admits that Hosea did, de- 
nouncing the worship of idols, how can he dare to say that the 
prophet does not condemn this worship because it is forbid- 
den by the laiw? The truth is that neitheir he nor any other 
man who ever lived has known, or could know, that it is sin- 
ful to worship Jehovah under the symbol of calves, without 
a law forbidding it. Koman Catholics have not learned that 
it is wrong to worship Christ by bowing before a crucifix, even 
though they have been reading for a thousand years the ex- 
press prohibition of such worship in the Scriptures. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY 177 

This denial is not anly irrational in itself, but it is incon- 
sistent with ^dia.t Ilotsea says of the law. In the beginning 
of his special denunciation of this sinful worship, he says : "My 
people are destroyed: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I 
will also reject thee, that thou ahalt be no more priest to me: 
seeing thou hast forgot.ten the law of thy God, I also will for- 
get thy children" (iv. 6). Here the knowledge which they 
lacked, the kno^vledge which they had rejected, is proved by 
the collocation of the clauses to be the knowledge of the law 
of their God; and the charge, "Thou hast forgotten the law 
of thy God," shows that they had formerly known it. A fefw 
verses below he adds: "They shall commit whoredom, and shall 
not increase: because they have left off to take heed to Jeho- 
vah" (verse 10). They had ceased to take heed to Jehovah 
by forgetting and rejecting the knowledge of his law. Words 
could not make it plainer that they had formerly known the 
law of God. Again, speaking for God, he says: "I desire 
mercy, and not sacrifice; and knowledge of God more than 
burnt offerings" (vi. 6). The first clause of this sentence, 
as is proved by the parallel in the second, is an example of 
the well-known hebraism of an absolute negative where the rel- 
ative is meant; and it means, "I desire mei'cy more than sac- 
rifice." He desires sacrifice, and he desires burnt offerings; 
but he esteems mercy toward their fellow men, and knowledge 
of himself, more highty than either. This is also the teach- 
ing of Christ, who adopted these words of Hosea on two dif- 
ferent occasions (Matt ix. 13; xii. 7). But the knowledge 
of God, without which they would have no incentive to mercy, 
was derived only from his law, another proof that they had 
once possessed the law, but had rejected and forgotten it. 

Finally Hosea, speaking in the name of Jehovah, covers the 
whole ground by the well-kno^vn words: "Because Ephraim 
hath multiplied altars to sin, altars have been unto him to sin. 
Though I TST-ite for him my law in ten thousand precepts, they 
are counted as a strange thing" (viii. 11, 12). Here is an 
unquestionable reference to written law; and the clause "they 
are counted as a strange thing," is equivalent to the rejecting 



178 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

and the forgetting oi tlie law in the previoius citations. This 
clause, moreover, being expree.sed in the present tense, shows 
that the writing spoken of had already taken place. The 
first clause, then, can not mean, '^though I should write my 
law." Neither can the clause mean, "though I am writing 
my law." It is a law which had been written. The alter- 
native rendering in the margin of the Revised Version brings 
out this thought. "I wrote for him the ten thousand things 
of my law, but they are counted as a strange thing." The 
connection of this sentence with the preceding, "Because 
Ephraim hath multiplied altars to sin, alt^ars have been unto 
him to sin," shows that the sin of these altars is the one 
chiefly referred to as counting the written law a strange thing. 
The position taken by the destructive critics is so com- 
pletely overthrown by the evidence in these passages, that they 
have taxed their ingenuity to the utteirmost in seeking to at- 
tach to them a different meaning. The Hebrew word ren- 
dered "law" is torah; and we are gravely told that in these 
early prophets it means, not a written law, but the oral teach- 
ing of the prophets. ''Torah/' says Robertson Smith, "is the 
living prophetic word." And again he says: "The torah is 
not yet a finished and complete system, booked and reduced 
to a code, but a living word in the mouth of the prophets" 
(0. T., 300).^^ But where was this "living word in the mouth 
of the prophets," by which the calf-worship had been so se- 
verely condemned ? Just three prophets had figured in Israel 



^*With this Kuenen agrees, but he modifies the thought by add- 
ing: "Nothing hinders us from even assuming that they had also 
in view collections of laws and admonitions to which a higher an- 
tiquity or even a Mosaic origin was attributed" (Rel. of Israel, I. 56). 
Wellhausen differs from Kuenen at this point. He says: "It is cer- 
tain that Moses was the founder of the Torah;" but he explains it by 
adding: "In fact, it can be shown that throughout the whole of the 
older period the Torah was no finished legislative code, but consisted 
entirely of the oral decisions and instructions of the priests" (Is- 
rael," Encyc. Brit., p. 409, c. 2). He escapes the absurdity of re- 
ferring it to prophets, when there were none before Amos and Hosea 
to promulgate laws, but in doing so he stands against his fellow crit- 
ics, who deny that there was a regular priesthood in "the older period" 
of which he speaks. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 179 

since the calves w^re set up; and with reference to tliean Pro- 
fessor Smitii has ahieady dug away the ground from under his 
own feet, by saying that Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with 
the calf-worship, and that Amos said nothing against it^ 
Where, then, is the torah, the "living word in the mouth of the 
prophets,'' to which Hosea appeals ? It vanishes into thin air 
as soon as you make the inquiry. 

On anothei* page (303) Professor Smith says that when 
Hosea says to the priests, "Thou hast forgotten the torah oi 
thy God" (Hos. iv. 6), it ''can not fairly be doubted that the 
torah which the priests have forgotten is the Mosaic torah;'* 
but he still denies that it was written. He says, "It is simple 
matter of fact that the prophets do not refer to a written torah 
as the basis of their teaching, and w^e have seen that they abso- 
lutely deny the existence of a binding ritual law" (302). But 
if Hosea appealed to a torah in his denunciation of the calf- 
worship, whether a "living word in the mouth of the proph- 
ets," or a traditional torah transmitted orally from Moses, 
this toj^ah must of necessity have been more or less of a ritual 
character, in that it condemned the worship of the calves. The 
right or the wTong of w^orshiping Jehovah, or any other god, 
under the symbol of calves, is a question of ritual, and noth- 
ing else. Unwittingly, then, in the very act of affirming that 
the prophets "absolutely deny the existence of a binding rit- 
ual law," our critics prove that they recognized one. Such 
is the self-contradiction in which this form of criticism re- 
peatedly involves itself. 

While Smith, in common wdth his German teachers, thus 
boldly denies that the prophets refer to a written torah as the 
basis of their teaching, here comes Prof. T. K. Cheyne, more 
radical in some respects than he, to flatly contradict him. In 
bis introduction to the Book of Hosea {Cambridge Bible for 
Schools) J he makes the following statements: 

All that is certain in regard to Hosea's relation to the law, is what 
he tells us himself; viz.: that laws with a sanction which, though 
ignored by the northern Israelites, he himself recognized as divine, 
were in course of being written down (viii. 12). Our present text 



180 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

makes him even say that the divine precepts might be reckoned by 
myriads, but this would not apply even to our present Pentateuch, and 
we should probably correct rihho, "myriad," into dibhre, "words" (of 
my law). There may, of course, either have been various small law- 
books, or one large one; we can not determine this point from the 
Book of Hosea (36, 37). 

It is morally certain that kSo radical a critic as Cheyne is 
known to be, would not have made this admission in opposi- 
tion to his fellow critics had he not been constrained to do so 
by the evidence in the case. 

It will be observed, however, that in making this conces^ 
sion, Professor Cheyne is by no means willing to concede that 
the written law-book refcTred to by Hosea could have been our 
Pentateuch ; and his reason for holding that it was not, is curi- 
ous anough. It is, that the exact tenm "myriads" could not 
apply to our present Pentateuch. I suppose that no one pre- 
tends that in its literal sense it could; but when Hosea speiaks 
of God's law as being written in ten thousand precepts, wheire 
is the simpleton who ever supposed, that he used the numer'al 
literally? But, further, if this huge numeral could not ap- 
ply to the precepts of the Pentateuch, what about the pre- 
cepts in his "various small law-books" ? Had they as many 
written precepts as we find in our present Pentateuch ? "No 
critic will answer yes. Then, why try to cut off the head of 
the Pentateuch with a knife which, in the very attempt, cuts 
off the critic's own head ? 

4. Isaiah. In further proof that "the theology of the proph- 
ets before Ezekiel has no place for the system of priestly sac- 
rifice and ritual," Prof. Robertson Smith quotes a well-known 
passage in the first chapter of Isaiah; and he quotes it as fol- 
lows : 

"What arc your many sacrifices to me, saith Jehovah : I delight not 
in the blood of bullocks, and lambs, and hegoats. When ye come to 
see my face, who hath asked this at your hands, to tread my courts? 
Bring no more vain oblations . . . my soul hateth your new moons 
and your feasts; they are a burden upon me; I am weary to bear 
them"— Isa. i. 11, seq. (0. T., 293). 

Quoted thus, Isaiah would prove not merely that he had 
no place for the priestly sacrifice and ritual, but that Jehovah 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 181 

hated such tilings, and rebuked tJie people for presenting them 
— that he forbade such -worshipers to "tread his courts." This 
is to prove too much ; for on another page the same author says 
that the prophets have "no objection to sacrifice and ritual in 
the abstract;" they only deny that God has enjoined sacrifice 
(295). 

But in thus quoting the passage, a part is omitted where 
the dots are printed, which, if copied, would prove, by the same 
line of argument, that Jehovah also hated the Sabbath. It 
reads: "Incense is an abomination to me; new moon and sab- 
bath, the calling of assemblies — I can not away with iniquity 
and the solemn meeting." Whatever may be thought of the 
new moon holy day here mentioned, and of the solemn meet- 
ings referred to, no sane man can believe that Isaiah, in the 
name of Jehovah, held the Sabbath to be an abomination. 

Furthermore, this quotation stops too soon. It leaves out 
the words : "And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide 
my face from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will 
not hear." Did Jehovah hate prayer? And was prayer 
one of the ritual observances for which the early prophets had 
"no place in their theology" ? So it would seem if there 
io any sense in the use which Robertson* Smith, in common with 
his fellow critics, makes of this passage. But the climax of 
misquotation and misapplication is reached in omitting the last 
clause of Isaiah's philippic, which explains all that precedes: 
"Your hands are full of blood !" This is the reason which 
Jehovah himself gives why the* sacrifices, the inoense, the new 
moon holy days, the sabbath, the solemn meetings and the 
prayers of that people, were an abomination to him. The 
same is true to-day, and it ever has been. If a church were 
crowded to-day with worshipers whose hands were full of blood, 
every prayer they could offer, and every hymn they could sing, 
would be as abominable as were those denounced by Isaiah. 
It is therefore a fearful abomination to employ these words 
of the prophet as if the specified acts of worship, when rightly 
rendered from clean hands and pure hearts, were hateful to 
Jehovah. It is high time that this perversion of Jehovah's 



182 The authorship of 

words, first invented by the enemies of the Bible, were aban« 
doned by those who profess to be its friends. 

Immediately after quoting this passage in his own way, to- 
gether with one from Amos, which we have noticed, Kobeirtson 
Smith says: "It is sometimes argued that such passages mean 
only that Jehovah will not accept the sacrifices of the wicked, 
and that they are quite consistent with a belief that sacrifice 
and ritual aire a necessary accompaniment of true religion. 
But there are other texts which absolutely exclude such a view." 
We shall examine these other texts. 

5. Micah. The first of these which remains to be noticed 
is the oft-quoted passage in Micah, which Professor Smith in- 
troduces thus: 

Micah declares that Jehovah does not require sacrifice. He asks 
nothing of his people but "to do justly, and love mercy, and walk 
humbly with their God" — Mic. vi. 8 (ib., 294). 

We shall best understand the passage by having the whole 
of it before the eye at once: "Wherewith shall I come before 
Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God ? Shall I come 
before him with burnt offerings, and with calves a year old ? 
Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten 
thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my firstborn for my 
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth 
Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love merey, 
and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Mic. vi. 6-8). 

The four questions here expounded by the prophet require 
negative answers. They all point to the one end brought out 
in the last, the removal of "my transgression,'' the "sin of my 
soul." The one point of inquiry is, when I come before Jeho- 
vah to obtain his favor, will I secure it by burnt offerings? 
Will the offering of even a thousand rams secure it ? Will 
offerings of oil secure it, even if I offer ten thousand rivers 
of it? Having failed with all of these, can I secure it by 
offering my firstborn? The answer is, l^o. And this is the 
answer, whether we think that the Levitical law was in force 
at the time or not. !N"o man of intelligence over lived under 



^HE BOOK OF DEUfERONOMV. Igg 

that law who would have answered otherwise. Only the su- 
perstitious and hypocritical under the Levitical law ever pre- 
tended that God's favor to men depended on the multitude of 
his sacrifices, or their costliness. The law itself precluded 
any such pretense by prescribing as the sin-offering, whether 
for the sins of an individual, or those of the whole people, only 
a single victim, and this most usually only a lamb or a kid. It 
was also made perfectly plain by the law that even by these 
a man's sins could not be removed. The sinner was required 
to bring the victim to the altar, lay his hand upon its head, con- 
fess his sin, and slay the victim ; and without these he knew 
that the offering would be ineffective (Lev. iv. 27-vi. 7). 
Seeing, then, that under the full sway of the Levitical law 
these questions would be pertinent, and would be answered in 
the negative, it is absurd to use them as proof that tlie Levit- 
ical law was not yet in existence. 

To this conclusive reasoning we are ajble to add demonstra- 
tion; for it is admitted by all the negative critics that the 
law in Deuteronomy recognizes the ritual of sacrifice, and even 
restricts the offering of sacrifices to the altar at the central sanc- 
tuary; but the author of that law employs almost the identi- 
cal words of Micah when he demands: "And now, Israel, what 
doth Jehovah thy God require of thee, but to fear Jehovah thy 
God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve 
Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul, to keep 
the commandments of Jehovah, and his statutes, which I com- 
mand thee this day for thy good?" (Deut. x. 12, 13). Does 
the Deuteronomist, then, whosoever he may be, exclude here 
the sacrifices which he elsewhere enjoins ? or does he include 
them in walking in Jehovah's ways, serving him, and keeping 
his statutes ? There is only one answer. And how could 
a man, if he lived under the Levitical law, "walk humbly with 
his God," as Micah requires, witl^out offering such sacriffoes 
as God's law required of him ? A neglect of these wooild be 
pride and rebellion. On the other hand, offering a thousand 
rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil, if it were possible, would 



184 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

be a piece of vainglory, while offering his firstborn would be 
heathenism. 

This method of perverting the Seriptnr-es would have a 
parallel, if one should argue that Jesus, in saying, "^ot every 
one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king- 
dom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father who 
is in heaven," excludes the ordinance of baptism from his re- 
quirements. It would be a stupid fellow indeed who would 
not see that we do the will of our Father in heaven in part by 
being baptized. So the Jew walked humbly wuth his God 
by offering without fail for his sins the sacrifices appointed. 

6. Last of all we come to the prophet Jeremiah. He is 
constantly quoted by negative critics as denying that God ap- 
pointed sacrifice when he led Israel out of Egypt. Thus Eob- 
ertson Smith (0. T., 294) : 

Jeremiah vii. 21, seq., says in express words, "Put your burnt 
offerings to your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not to your 
fathers, and gave them no command in the day that I brought them 
out of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this thing 
I commanded them. Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye 
shall be my people, etc. (Comp. Isa. xliii. 23, seq.) 

Commenting further on this and similar passages, Smith 
says : 

This does not prove that they (the prophets) have any objection 
to sacrifice and ritual in the abstract. But they deny that these things 
are of positive divine institution, or have any part in the scheme on 
which Jehovah's grace is administered in Israel. Jehovah, they say. 
has not enjoined sacrifice. This does not imply that he has never 
accepted sacrifice, or that ritual service is absolutely wrong. But it is 
at least mere form, which does not purchase any favor from Jehovah, 
and might be given up without offense. It is impossible to give a 
flatter contradiction to the traditional theory that the Levitical system 
was enacted in the wilderness {ib., 295). 

(1) If this is the real position of the prophets, it is most 
unaccountable; for if Jehovah had never enjoined sacrifice in 
his service, how could it be supposed by the prophets, ot by 
any sane person, that it could be acceptable — that the daily 
slaughter of innocent victims, and frequent holocausts in which 
thousands of animals were slain and burned, making the house 
of God, as some irreverent skeptics have eixpressed it, a verita- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 185 

ble slaughter-house, could be accepted by him at any time or 
under any circumstances ? Such will-worship would have 
been met by every true prophet of God with the rebuke which 
Isaiah administered to the hypocrites whose hands were full of 
blood, and who yet had the impudence to bring a multitude of 
sacrifices into the temple. '^Who/' says the indignant proph- 
et, ^^hath required this at your hands, to trample my courts V^ 
(Isa. 1. 10-15). And how could Solomon, without rebuke, 
have erected his costly and splendid temple, whose every ap- 
pointment was arranged with reference to the offering of sacri- 
fices, if God had never enjoined sacrifice as a part of his wor- 
ship? The position is absurd in the highest degree; and if 
Jeremiah assumed it, he is either guilty of absurdity himself, 
or he charges it upon the whole host of Israelite worshipeirs 
from the beginning to the end. 

(2) Again, if Jeremiah, or any of the prophets, is to be 
thus understood, then they deny what all of our critics except 
the most radical admit, the divine origin of the '%o6k of the 
covenant." For in that book we have this well-known divine 
enactment; ^^An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and 
shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offer- 
ings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where I record 
my name I will come unto thee and I wall bless thee. And 
if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of 
hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast 
polluted it" (Ex. xx. 24, 25). Here is a positive enactment 
of sacrifice, accompanied by precise directions as to the kind of 
altar on w^hich they could be acceptably offered. Jeremiah, if 
he could have had the motive, could not have had the daring 
to unite with our modem critics in denying that God had thus 
legislated. 

(3) It is admitted by even the radical critics that Jere- 
miah knew the Book of Deuteronomy, and believed that it was 
God's law by the hand of Moses. But to understand him as 
denying the divine enactment of sacrifice, is to make him con- 
tradict that book in which he believed, and the teaching of 



186 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

which he was zealously assisting King Josiah to enforce upon 
the consciences of the people. For this book represents Mo- 
ses in the last year of the wanderings as saying: '^Unto the 
place which Jehovah your God shall choose out of all your 
tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall 
ye seek, and thither thou shalt come: and thither ye shall 
bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, 
and the heave-ofPering of your hand, and your freewill offer- 
ings, and the firstlings of your herd and of your flock" (xii. 
5, 6). Our critics are never weary of quoting this passage 
when they are seeking to prove that it was the introduction 
of a law never before known in Israel; but here they come 
with the Book of Jeremiah in their hands — Jeremiah, who be- 
lieved in the divine authority of this law, and whose book 
they tell us is saturated with reminiscences from Deuteronomy 
— and make him flatly deny the truth of this passaga Was 
ever inconsistency more glaring or moire inexcusable? Scien- 
tific criticism ! 

(4) The absurdity of thus interpreting Jeremiah's words 
appears still more monstrous when we take into view some of 
his own utterances on this subject in other passages. In xi. 
3, 4, he expressly cites the covenant given at Mount Sinai in 
these solemn words: ^Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel: 
Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this cove- 
nant, which I made with your fathers in the day that I brought 
them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, 
saying, Obey my voice, and do them, accoTding to all which 
I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your 
God." But one of the things commanded when this covenant 
was made, was that they should erect an altar, as we have 
quoted above, on which to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. 
In xiv. 11, 12, he says : ^Mehovah said to me. Pray not for this 
people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their 
cry; and when, they offer burnt offering and oblation, I will 
not accept them: but I will consume them by the swo^rd, and 
by the famine, and by the pestilence." Here it is clearly im- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. "ist 

plied that but for tlie exti-enie wickedness of the j^eople, on ac- 
count of which they were to be no longer subjects for prayer, 
and their burnt offerings and oblations would noit be accepted, 
all these acts of worship would be accepted; and it is just as 
reasonable to say that fasting and prayer were not authorized 
by God, as to say that sacrifices were not. 

Finally, passing by several other passages having a sim- 
ilar bearing, in xvii. 24-26 Jehovah promises, on condition that 
the people "hearken to him,'' that Jerusalem shall remain for- 
ever, and he adds; "They shall come from the cities of Judah, 
and from the cities round about Jerusalem, and from the land 
of Benjamin, and from the lowland, and from the mountains, 
and from the South, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, 
and oblations, and frankincense, and bringing sacrifices of 
thanksgiving, unto the house of Jehovah." Here the whole 
round of Levitical sacrifices is described, and the fact that all 
are to be zealously observed is the crowning blessing in a gra- 
cious promise. Can we imagine Jehovah through the prophet 
speaking thus of a ritual which he had never authorized, and 
which, though observed in the right spirit, could secure no favor 
at his hand ? 

What, then, is the meaning of Jeremiah in the passage so 
confidently employed by the critics to prove that Jehovah had 
never spoken to the fathers concerning such a service ? If 
men will but use the knowledge which they easily command 
when they are not swayed by prepossessions, it is not far to 
seek. It is found in that well-known Hebrew idiom by w^hieh, 
in comparing two objects or courses of action, the universal 
negative is used with the one that is inferior. A few ex- 
amples of it may remind the intelligent reader of that which 
he already knows, but is apt, on account of its difference from 
our own usage, to forget. When Jose^ph had revealed him- 
self to his guilty brethren, and was seeking to comfort them, 
he said: "Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye 
sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve 
life. ... So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God*' 



188 ITHE authorship OF 

(Gen. xlv. 5-8). In Deut. v. 2, 3, Moses says to the people: 
"Jehovali our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Jeho- 
vah made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even 
us, who are all of us here alive this day." He means, Jeho- 
vah made a covenant not with our fathers only, or specially, 
but with us also. Jesus says : "Think not that I came to send 
peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 
X. 34). The people of Samaria say to the woman who Kad 
met Jesus at the well: "^N'ow we believe, not because of tky 
speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that 
this is indeed the Saviour of the world;" and yet it had just 
been said, "Many of the Samarians believed on him because 
of the word of the woman" (John iv. 39-42). They believed 
finally, not because of her speaking alone. Paul says to the 
Corinthians, "I was sent not to baptize, but to preach the gos- 
pel" (I. Cor. i. 17) — not to baptize alonci, or chiefly, but to 
preach the gospel. He also says to Timothy: "Be no longer 
a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach.'s sak3 
and thine often infirmities" (I. Tim. v. 23). These are a few 
examples of the idiom, and others are to be found in all parts 
of the Scriptures. Instances of its use are determined, as in 
the case of all other figurative language, by the nature of the 
case, by the context, or by the known sentiments of the writer. 
The passage under discussion in Jeremiah is an example 
of this idiom; and the prophet means by it, "I spake not to 
your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought 
them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or 
sacrifices as their chief service; but this I commanded them as 
the chief thing, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will 
be your God, and ye shall be my people." We are forced to 
this conclusion, both by the sentiments of the prophet expressed 
in the other passages quoted above, and by the context pre»- 
ceding this passage. The discourse in which our passage is 
found begins with the chapter. It was delivered as the 
prophet stood in the gate of the temple. He first de- 
nounces the men of Judah for trusting to the temple of 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 189 

Jeliovali, as false prophets Lad tauglit them, for security 
against the disasters which he predicted; and tells thean 
that they are trusting in "lying words." He demands of 
them, as their ground of safety, the abandonment of crimes 
which they were comimitting ; and with respect to the tem,- 
ple and its services, he indignantly demands: ^Will ye 
s^teal, and murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, 
and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods, whom ye 
have not kno^^Ti, and come and stand before me in this house 
which is called by my name, and say. We are delivered; that 
we may do all these abominations ? Is this house which is called 
by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes ?" Then he 
reminds them of the destruction of Shiloh, where he caused 
his name to dwell at the first, and he tells them: "I will do 
unto the house which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, 
and the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I 
have done to Shiloh." He then tells Jeremiah not to pray for 
the people. Even now, since JosiaJi's reformation had taken 
place, and public idolatry had been suppressed, they were still 
worshiping the heavenly bodies in secret. "The children 
gather wood, and the f atbers kindle the fire, and the women 
knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to 
pour out drink-offerings to other gods, that they may provoke 
me to anger." It was in view of this hypocrisy that the prophet 
declares in the name of Jehovah : "I spake not to your fathers, 
nor commanded them in the day that I brought themi out of the 
land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: but 
this I coromanded them, saying. Hearken imto my voice, and 
I w^ll be your God, and ye shall be my people." In view of 
this context, and in view of the indisputable fact that both Jere- 
miah and the people whom he addressed recognized as true what 
19 said of the ''book of the covenant" and in Deuteronomy of 
God's commands in respect to sacrifice, why have our critics, 
who are quick to recognize this idiom in other places, so blindly 
failed to see it here? "There are none so blind as those who 
will not see." 



190 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

We have now examined all of tlie principal passages which 
are used to prove that the pre-eixilic prophets had no knowl- 
edge of the Levitical law, and that all of them except. Jeremiah 
were ignorant of Deuteronomy; and we are seriously mistaken 
if every unprejudiced reader will not agree that they furnish 
no such proof. On the contrary, all of them, when fairly con- 
strued, are in perfect harmony with such knowledge, some of 
them presuppose it, and many passages which these critics have 
overlooked bear positive testimony in its favor. So elaborate 
and painstaking an attempt to sustain a false assumptioai has 
seldom proved so complete a failure. 

§9. EvidejS^ce fkom Style. 

In the early st,age of destructive criticism its advocates 
depended chiefly on peculiarities of style for deteirmining the 
relative ages of documents, and for distinguishing one writer 
from anotheir in composite documents. For the latter purpose 
it is still almost their only reliance. But this method, called 
literary criticism, has been abandoned to a large extent in 
discussing such questions as the authorship and date of Deute- 
ronomy. Its relegation to an inferior place is the result of 
the many glaring exposures of its unreliability which have been 
published by conservative scholars. These exposures have 
recorded a decisive victory of conservatism, which may be taken 
as a token of the victoiry yet to be won in the whole field of con- 
troversy. Professoir Driver, in his Introduction, shows the 
effect upon himself of this victory, by minimizing the argument 
from this source. He devotes but little more than four pages 
to the subject, and nearly three of these are taken up with the 
quotation of forty-one phrases characteristic of Deuteronomy. 
It is not claimed, in reference to any of the forty-one, that 
Moses could not have used it. Of many it is asserted that they 
were adopted from the pre-existing document JE ; but this is 
only to acknowledge that they were adopted from what we now 
read in the Book of Exodus, and it conforms with the Biblical 
representation that this book was written before Deuteronomy. 
Of the author of Deuteronomy he says: 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 191 

His power as an orator is shown in the long and stately periods 
with which his work abounds: at the same time, the parenthetic treat- 
ment which his subject often demands, always maintains its freshness, 
and is never monotonous or prolix. In his command of a chaste and 
persuasive eloquence, he stands unique among the writers of the Old 
Testament (102). 

What orator among all tiha.t graced the history of Israel is 
more likely to have deserved this encomium than Moses, whose 
training in all tlie learning of the Egyptians, and whose prac- 
tice through forty years in the wilderness with people whom he 
was almost daily addressing, gave him pre-eminent opportuni- 
ties to acquire unique oratorical powers ? It is not too much to 
say that Driver abandons the argument from style as respects 
the authorship of Deuteronomy. ■'^^ 

This completes our review of the evidences on which those 
critics who deny tlie Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy depeoid 
for their conclusion. If not exhaustive of these, numerically 
considered, it is exhaustive, we modestly think, of their force 
as a whola The refutation will derive additional force from 
the positive evidence for the Mosaic authorship which we shall 
next present* 

^*The reader who is curious to trace the arguments and illustra- 
tions by which this citadel of the earlier critics has been stormed, is 
referred to the following works: Edersheim's History and Prophecy 
in Reference to the Messiah, 261-263; Stanley Leathes' Witness of the 
Old Testament to Christ, 282 ff.; Green's Higher Criticism of the Penta- 
teuch, 113-118; Bartlett's Veracity of the Hexateuch, 300-302; The 
Higher Critics Criticised, by H. L. Hastings and R. P. Stebbins, Ixii., 
Ixiii.; 152-172. 



PART II. 



EYIDENOE FOE THE MOSAIC 
AUTHORSHIP. 



199 



PART II, 

EVIDEE"CE EOK THE MOSAIC AUTHOESHIP. 

I. INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

§1. The Direct Testimony of the Writer. 

It is a rule of evidence recognized in oiiir coairts of justice, 
that tlie claim of authorship which any written document sets 
forth within itself has a presumption in its favor. This pi-e- 
sumption has such force that upon it alone the document must 
be received as a genuine product of said author, unless the claim 
is proved to be false. The burden of proof lies on him who 
calls it in question. This is true of bank checks, notes of hand, 
deeds to real estate, wills, and all such writings. It is equally 
true of books. This presumption is the natural starting-point 
for such a discussion as the present, but on the preceding pages 
we have considered evidences by which certain critics have at- 
tempted, to set it aside. This reversal of the natural order 
seemed prudent, as we have remarked in the Introduction (§7), 
on account of the fact that the minds of many have been for a 
generation preoccupied with the belief that the Mosaic author- 
ship has been disproved. Having examined all of these evi- 
dences which can be claimed as decisive in the case, and found 
that nofne of thean has the force claimed for it, and that many 
have a bearing in the opposite direction, we now propose to set 
forth in contrast wdth these the evidences which have led Bibli- 
cal scholars in the past as in the present to believe that Moses 
is the author of the book. We shall dwell first on explicit state- 
ments of the book itself. 

1. The first sentence of the book, which is e^ddently in- 
tended as its title, reads thus: "These be the words which 
Moses spake unto all Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness, 
in the Arabah over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, 
and Laban, and Ilazeroth, and Di-zahab." This represents 

i 195 



196 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the conteoits of the book as having beeii delivered orally to all 
Israel by Moses. It also very definitely locat.es the place in 
which this was done. Of the words defining the place we have 
spoken fiill}^ in Part First, Section 6. The author next states 
very definitely the time at which Moses began this oral com- 
munication : "It came to pass in the fortieth year, in the elev- 
enth month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake 
unto the children of Israel, according to all that Jehovah had 
given him in commandment unto them." In the next sentence 
he again defines the place in different words, saying, "Beyond 
Jordan, in the land of Moab, began Moses to declare this law." 
Then follows a discourse, beginning with verse 6, and ending 
with the fourth chapter and foirtieth verse. 

These statements affirm nothing about committing the dis- 
course to writing. They refer only to its oral delivery ; but in 
doing this they make Moses the author of what is written. On 
this point they could not be more explicit. These prefatory 
remarks may have been written after the discourse was; but 
whether written befoi'^ or after does not appear from the text^ 
Neither does it appear whether tliey Avere written by Moses 
himself, or by another person ; for although the third person 
is used in speaking of Moses, this was the frequent custom of 
ancient historians when speaking of themselves. In the speech 
itself the first person is necessarily employed. 

One thing more in these prefatory remarks demands our 
attention. The words of Moses which follow are called a "law." 
"Moses began to declare this law" (verse 5). But in the first 
discourse, while there are very solemn exhortations to keep 
the laws which Moses had previously given, there are no laws 
propounded. The discourse is historical, not legal. But the 
second discourse is legal and not historical. These considera- 
tions show that the expression "this law" is intended to in- 
clude both ; just as, in later- times, the whole Pentateuch, law 
and history was called "the law." The preface then affirms 
the Mosaic authorship not merely of the first discourse, but 
of that which follows. It includes, in reality, the contents of 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 197 

all the rest of the book as it existed at the time; and we should 
understand it as including all as we now have it unless we 
find good reason to suppose that some of it has been added 
since. 

2. Preface to the Second Discourse. At v. 1 a second dis- 
course begins, and it closes at xxvi. 19. It is introduced by 
prefatory statements in iv. 44-49, of which this is the first: 
^'And this is the law which Moses set before the children of 
Israel: these are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the 
judgements, which Moses spake to the children of Israel, 
when they came forth out of Egypt; beyond Jordan, over 
against Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon kin^ of the Amo- 
rites, who dwelt at Ileshbon, whom Moses and the chil- 
dren of Israel smote, when they came forth out of Egypt.'' 
Here the expression, ^^And this is the law," refers back 
to the words, "Moses began to declare this law" (i. 5), 
and 'means this also is the law; that is, a continuance 
of the law which Moses set before Israel. It is further 
defined here as containing "testimonies, statutes and judge- 
ments." This is the second declaration of the Mosaic author- 
ship, and in compliance with it we are told that "Moses called 
unto all Israel, and said to them. Hear, Israel, the statutes 
and the judgements which I speak in your ears this day, that 
ye may learn them, and observe to do tliem" (v. 1). 

3. After the Close of the Second Discourse. ^ext after 
this second discourse by Moses, directions are given for the 
erection of great stones at Mt. Ebal, which were to be covered 
with plaister, and in the plaister, while soft, ^yeYe to be writ- 
ten "all the words of this law;" and the sing-ular ceremony of 
pronouncing curses and blessings was thei'e to be observed 
(xxvii. 1-26). In the directions here given, Moses is three 
times said to have been the principal speaker. Eirst, "Moses 
and the elders of Israel" command the people, saying, "Keep 
all the commandment which I co^mmand you this day" (1); 
second, "Moses and the priests the Levites" spake to all Israel, 
aaying, "Keep silence, and hearken, Israel" (9) ; and third, 
"Moses charged the people the same day" (11). Thus the 



198 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

twenty-seventli cliapter is ascribed, to Moses three t^imes. Thien 
the twieoity-eiglith chapter, which is a prophetic ooitline of the 
history of Israel down to the Roman captivity, and on to the 
present day, is a continuation of what he says in the twenty- 
seventh. 

4. In the Preface to the Covenant. The section including 
chapters xxix. and xxx. is introduced with the stateiment, "These 
are the words of the covenant which Jehovah commanded 
Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, 
beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb;" and 
the words themselves are preceded by the statement, "Moses 
called unto all Israel, and said to them.'' Thus the contents 
of these two chapters are explicitly ascribed to Moses, and the 
thirty-first chapter opens with the statement, "And Moses went 
and spake these woirds untO' all Israel.'' Then the next seven 
verses of chapter xxxi. are occupied with what Moses said- by 
way of encouraging the people, and Joshua his successor. 

5. Committing this Law to Writing. Thus far nothing has 
been said in the book about committing its contents to writing. 
All has been spoken by Moses, in the form of public addresses 
to "all Israel." l^ow we have the statement (xxxi. 9) : "And 
Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests the sons 
of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and 
unto all the elders of Israel." This is immediately followed 
by the command, "At the end of every seven years, in the sot 
time of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when 
all Israel is come to appear before Jehovah thy God in the 
place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before 
all Israel in their hearing." Farther on in the same chapter 
(24-26) provision is made for the preservation of the book thus 
written, and it is said ; "And it came to pass, when Moses had 
made an end of writinsr the words of this law in a book, until 
they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, who 
bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, saying. Take this book 
of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant 
of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against 
thee." 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 190 

We thus have the most explicit testimony of this book it- 
self, that its contents up to the close of its thirty-first chapter 
were first delivered orally to all Israel by Moses, and then 
•written by him in a book, and that this book was then deliv- 
ered to the guardians of the most sacred symbol of Jehovah's 
presence, the ark of the covenant., as if it were of equal sanc- 
tity, and to be preserved with equal vigilance. It is vain to 
except any of the preceding contents, such as the first four 
chapters, and ascribe to them a later origin, for the repeated 
expression, ^^this law," found in every part as we have seen, 
like the links of a continuous chain binds all the parts in one. 

6. In the Preface to the Song, and that to the Blessing. 
We have already, in a previous section (§6, 4), called atten- 
tion to the four explicit statements of tlie Mosaic authorship 
of the "song of Moses" (xxxi. 19, 22, 30 ; xxxii. 44) ; and to 
'the one which asserts that he blessed the children of Israel 
with the blessing contained in the thirty-third chapter (xxxiii. 
1) ; and we have answered the argiiments by which adverse 
critics have tried to set this testimony aside. Nothing more 
needs to be said on these points. 

We have now reached the end of the book, with tJie excep- 
tion of the account of the death of Moses, and some comments 
on his career, all of which undoubtedly came from the pen of 
some later writer or writers. A very small number of persons, 
with extreme views of inspiration, have expressed the opinion 
that Moses, by inspiration, wrote this account and these com- 
ments; and destructive critics have sometimes cited this fact, 
in order to throw discredit on the whole company of scholars 
who believe in the Mosaic authorship. This is unworthy of 
men claiming to be critics. We could as well retort by quot- 
ing some of the silly opinions advanced by unskilled advocates 
of tlieir own theory, of which many can be found, and hold 
their entire school responsible for these. 

The reader is now better prepared to appreciate the oft- 
repeated assertion that the Book of Deuteronomy does not 
claim Moses as its author. Xo assertion could be more reck- 



200 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

less ori the part of any man who has gathered up the book's 
account of itself; and the man who has not done this has no 
right to make any assertion at all O'U the subject. Unless this 
internal evidence shall be set aside by such proofs as have never 
yet been brought forth, it must stand good before the bar of 
enlightened opinion. 

§2. Indirect Testimony of the Author. 

The formal claim of authorship made in a document may 
often be confirmed, or thrown into doubt., by remarks inciden- 
tally made when the question of authoTship is not in the au- 
thoT^s mind. A large number of such remarks, confirming the 
formal clailm which we have just considered, is found in the 
Book of Deuteronomy. They consist in incidental allusions 
to the fact that when the speeches and poems which make up 
the body of the work were composed, the speaker and his audi- 
tors had not yet crossed over into the promised land. There 
are none of these in the first discourse, for the evident reason 
that in it the speaker was reciting and comimenting on past 
events. But in tlie twenty-seven chapters which begin with 
the sixth and end with the thirty-second, they are as numerous 
as the chapteirs. They are not expressed in a stereotyped 
formula, as if they had been inserted for effect. Once we have, 
"In the land which ye go over to possess it'' (vi. 1). Three 
times we have, ^^When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into 
the land which he sware to thy fathers to give thee" (vi. 10 ; 
vii. 1 ; xi. 29) ; twice, "That thou may est go in and possess the 
good land" (vi. 18; viii. 1) ; once, "Thou art to pass over Jor- 
dan this day" (ix. 1) ; once, "They shall go in and possess the 
land" (x. 11) ; three times, "The land which thou goest in to 
possess it" (xi. 10, 11 ; xxxii. 47) ; once, "When ye go over 
Jordan and dwell in the land" (xii. 10) ; three times, "When 
thou shalt come into the land" (xvii. 4; xviii. 9; xxvi. 1) ; 
four times, "The land which Jehovah giveth thee to possess 
it" (xix. 2; xxi. 1, 23; xxv. 19); twice, "On the day when 
ye pass over Jordan" (xxvii. 2, 4) ; once' "Jehovah thy God 
will go over before thee" (xxxi. 3) ] twice^ "Joshua shall so 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 201 

over before thee" (xxxi. 3, 8) ; once, ''The land which ye go 
over Jordan to possess it" (xxxi. 13) ; once, ''When I shall 
have brought them into the land which I sware to their fathers" 
(xxxi. 20). 

Kow^, if Moses was the authofr of these several documents, 
as is so positively asserted, these forms of expression, and tliis 
frequent recurrence of theim, are perfectly natural; and the 
reader will find, upon examination of them, that they are 
every one nicely fitted to the context in which it occurs, taking 
form in harmony therewith. The frequency of their occur- 
rence is accounted for by the fact that the eastern slopes of the 
promised land were in full view of the multitude as theiy lis- 
tened to Moses, with nothing but the overflowing .Jordan be- 
tween it and them. In the earlier books, when there was a 
period of many years and a long desert journey between the 
people and the land of promise, the speeches of Moses are al- 
most void of such allusions. There are only two in Exodus, 
unless some have escaped our search (xiii. 5, 11) ; only three 
in Leviticus (xiv. 34; xxiii. 10; xxv. 2); and only five in 
lumbers, three of the five occurring in remarks made on the 
plain of Moab, wheire the discourses of Deuteronomy were de- 
livered (xv. 2, 18; xxxiii. 51; xxxiv. 2; xxxv. 10). l^othing 
could be more natural on the lips of Moses than the frequency 
of these expressions when standing in sight of the promised 
land, and the infrequency of them when far away. 

If, now, the Book of Deuteronomy, instead of being writ- 
ten by Moses, was composed seven centuries later, in the time 
of Manasseh, the only conceivable reason why it contains so 
many positive assertions of its Mosaic authorship, was to make 
its readers believe that Moses wrote it, the real author or au- 
thors knowing perfectly well that he did no such thing. And, 
on this hypothesis, the only motive for introducing these varied 
expressions in the speeches about a future entrance intO' the 
promised land, was to add a superfluity of false evidence of 
the same false representation. And when we consider the 
large number of these allusions, and the varied forms in which 
they are nresented, Ave find in them not only a superfluity of 



202 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

lying, but an ingenuity in framing falsehoods which, are in- 
credible because they surpass the cunning which any other 
spurious author has ever exhibited. !N"o juggler ever displayed 
more cunning in devising his tricks of legerdemain. 

Furthenmore, if the Books of Exodus, Leviticus and Kium- 
bers were written two hundred years later than Deuteronomy, 
the author or authors of these books had even moire^ reason to 
employ deceptive devices in making their readers believe that 
Moses wrote them, in proportion as their distance from the 
days of Moses was greater. They had also the example of the 
Deuteronomist to teach them skill in this line of deception. 
Why, then, did not they, while making speeches and putting 
them inio the lips of Moses, insert in them a similar number 
and variety of allusions to the future entrance into Canaan ? 
They insert enough of them to show that they were not ashamed 
of the device, but they fall far short of their exemplar in the 
nuimber of them. Was it because they thought it might not 
appear natural for Moses to speak so often of crossing the 
Jordan while he was at a distance from it? If so, this ex- 
planation, without reflecting any credit on their honesty, only 
magnifies their devilish ingenuity. 

§3. Incidental Evidence. 

There are certain enactments recorded in Deuteronomy 
which were wholly out of date in the time of Manasseh and 
Josiah, and which could not have originated later than the 
time of Moses. A few of these we specify: 

1. The Decree against Amalek. "Kemember what Amalek 
did to thee by the way as ye came foirth out of Egypt; how 
he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all 
that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary ; 
and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when Jehovah 
thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round 
about, in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an 
inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the reunem- 
brance of Amalek from under heaven; thoii shalt not forget^' 
(xxv. 17-19). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, 203 

If Moses is the author of both Exodus and Deuteronomy, 
this order is simply an order issued by Moses in the last year 
of the wanderings, for the execution of a decree issued by 
God in the first year (Ex. xvii. 8-16) ; but if the narrative in 
Exodus was not written till six hundred years after Moses, and 
Deuteronomy not till seven centuries after, then the author of 
the former put into the lips of God a decree which he never 
uttered, and the latter put an order for the execution of this 
decree in the lips of Moses which he never uttered. Moreover, 
at the supposed time of the writings, Amaleik had long since 
disappeared from the e^rth, having been exterminated by Saul 
and David. What motive, then, could have actuated these two 
writers? If we suppose that the hypothetical J or E wrote 
the account in Exodus because there was in his day an oral 
tradition that such a decree had been issued, this furnishes no 
excuse to the author of Deuteronomy for putting into the 
mouth of Moses an order for which there was not even tra- 
ditionary evidence. We must conclude either that it was an 
invention of the latter spun out of his own brain, or that he 
is himself an invention spun out of the brains of modern 
critics. Driver says that "only an antiquarian reason is as- 
signed for the injunction to exterminate Amalek" (Com., 
xxxi.). The reason given is, that Amalek had made an un- 
provoked atftack on Israel in the wilderness. If that was a 
valid reason, it does not become invalid by giving it a 
strange name, and calling it an "antiquarian reason." It ^vould 
be better to inquire, For what reason did the hypothetical 
writer put this "antiquarian reason'' in his book ? It could only 
have been to sustain the deception that Moses was the author 
of the book. 

2. The Order to Exterminate the Canaanites. It is only 
in Deuteronomy that this order is found; "But of the cities 
of these peoples, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an in- 
heritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but 
thou shalt uttedy destroy them ; the Hittite, and the Amorite, 
the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; 
as Jehovah thy Gofl hath commanded thee : that they teach you 



204 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

not to do afteT their abominatio'n&, which they have done unto 
their gods; so should ye sin against Jehovah your God" (xx. 
16-18). On the critical hypothesis., this order was. not in eix- 
istence in any written document when Deuteronomy was com- 
posed, not even in the imaginary documents J and E. The 
writer, then, must have composed it himself and put it into 
the mouth o»f Moses. And what motive could he have had. 
for so doing ? Tho Canaanite tribes mentioned had long since 
disappeared froim the face of the earth, and Israel had not ex- 
terminated the-m as this order required. They had slaughtered 
many, but they had spared many. Did the writer wish to 
hold up his ancestors as disobedient to a divine command? 
And was he so anxious to do this that he invented tiie command 
to make them appear disobedient to it ? No critic will answer. 
Yes. The existence of this order in the Book of Defuteronomy 
is, then, an enigma, if it was not placed there by Moses him- 
self. This conclusion is confirmed by the wholly evasive at- 
tempt of Driver to account for the order. He says : ^^Religious 
motives sufficiently explain the strongly hostile attitude adopted 
against the Canaanites" ((7om.^ xxx.). Yes; of course. But 
who adopted this strongly hostile attitude; a writer who lived 
long centuries after the Canaanites had disappeared ? or a wri- 
ter who lived while they were yet living and powerful ? If the 
latter, then Moses wrote Deuteronomy. If the former, then 
the man who wrote it was wasting am^munition by firing at a 
dead enemy. 

3. The Order E/especting Ammon, Moab and Edom. This 
order provided that an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter 
into the assembly of Jehovah, even tO' the tenth generation ; 
and two reasons are given : First, because they "met not Israel 
with bread and water in the way;'' and, second, because they 
hired Balaam to curse Israel. It also contained the prohibi- 
tion, "Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite ; for he is thy brother" 
(xxiii. 3-7). This order, like the one respecting the exter- 
mination of the Canaanites, is found in Deuteronomy alone. 
It is not in N^umbers or Exodus, nor in the hypothetical docu- 
ments J and E. Whence, then, did D obtain it? Was it a 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 205 

traditionary law which D here puts into the mouth of Moses? 
If so, why does it reverse the traditional attitude of Israel to^ 
ward these tribes ? From the days of David the bitterest hos- 
tility had existed between Edom and Israel, while friendly re- 
lations had in the main existed between. IsTael and the Ammon- 
ites and Moabites. David's Ammonite war which lasted two 
years, his severe chastisement of Moab, and the expedition of 
Jehoshaphat and Jehoram against Moab, are the exceptions. 
How, then, could D have conceived the idea of putting into 
the lips of Moses tlie command that an Edomite shall not be 
abhorred, but that an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not come 
into the assembly of Jehovah even to the tenth generation? 
It is incredible that he did so^; but it is most credible that 
Moses did it^ and that Israel in the case of the Edomites were 
finally led to abhor them on account of their later hostility and 
treachery. 

4. The Predictions in the Book. In the speeches ascribed 
to Moses many events are predicted, all of which were yet 
future in the time of Moses, and some were future in the time 
of the imaginary D. As respects those which wecre not future 
to D, it was of course possible for him to put predictions re*- 
specting them in the mouth, of Moses, and thus write history 
under the pretense of writing ancient prophecy. This, on the 
critical hypothesis, was another device intended to deceive the 
reader by making it appear that Moses had predicted events 
of which he had never spoken. This might have magnified 
the name of Moses as a prophet, but what other purpose could 
have actuated it our critics have not informed us. Indeed, 
they have overlooked this phase of the subjectu Among the 
events yet future to D, we mention the two captivities of Israel, 
the many evils consequent upon them, and the finail restoration 
of the remnants 

In chapter xxviii. a long series of sins and punishments is 
predicted, culminating in this: *' Jehovah shall bring thee, and 
thy king which thou shalt set over thee, imto a nation which 
thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and there shalt 
thou serve other gods, w^ood and stone" (36). That this is 



206 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the Babylonian captivity is made certain by the considerations, 
first, tvhat their king was to be taken away with them; and, 
second, that the nation taking them away was not one previous- 
ly kno>wn to them or their fathers. This was true of the Baby- 
lonians, or Chaldeans, who came into power on the overthrow 
of Nineveh after the close of Josiah's reign. At the date as- 
cribed to D, the power of Assyria was at its zenith, and Baby- 
lon was one of its subject provinces. Nebuchadnezzar and 
his Chaldean army, by whom Jerusalem was overthrown and 
Judah carried into exile, represented a nation which had just 
sprung into power as if by magic. 

Now, it is possible that the hypothetical D, guided by the 
utterances of the writing prophets, from Amos and Hosea to 
Isaiah and Micah, could have framed a prediction of the Baby- 
lonian captivity, such as we have in this passage; but if this is 
the way in which he obtained his foreknowledge, he was guilty 
of a deliberate fraud in putting the prediction back seven hun- 
dred years and pretending that Moses had uttered it. Let it 
be noted, too, that when the book of the law was found in the 
temple and read to King Josiah, it was this very prediction 
most of all which so frightened him that he rent his clothes 
and effected a religious reformation in his kingdom. He may 
have known that the four great prophets of recent times had 
predicted the same disaster and have been comparatively un- 
moved by the fact ; but when he heard it out of a book written 
by Moses, and heard it from the lips of Moses, he believed it 
and trembled; and yet, on the critical hypothesis, he was 
frightened by something which Moses never spoke and nevcT 
dreamed of speaking. 

This prediction is followed by a terrific array of the calami- 
ties which were to come upon Israel after this captivity, and 
then at verse 49 another captivity is introduced: "Jehovah 
shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the 
earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not 
understand ; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not re- 
gard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young: and 
he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy ground, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 207 

until thou be destroyed : which also shall not leave thee corn, 
wine or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or the young of thy 
flock, until he have caused thee to perish" (49-51). 

This conquering nation is distinguished froan the first by 
three characteristics: first, it was to come ''from far, from the 
end of the earth ;" second, its tongue was to be one not under- 
stood by Israel ; and, third, it was to be unmerciful to all classes 
of persons. Such were the Komans, by whoan Jerusalem was 
finally overthrown, and the Jews scattered as they are to-day. 
They came from the end of the earth, the western end, where- 
as the Chaldeans came from a, comparatively short distance. 
Second, their tongue, the Latin, was as strange to Israel as the 
Chinese is to an Anglo-Saxon, while the Babylonian was a kin- 
dred Semitic dialect. Third, they were more ruthless in the 
destruction of human life, and they swept the co'untry cleaner 
of all men and means of subsistence, than had E^ebuchadnezzar 
or Sennacherib. Josephus says (Wars, B. vi., c. 9), with per- 
haps some ecKaggeration, that they slew 1,100,000 of the popu- 
lation ; and he recites many of the cruelties here predicted. 

The prediction proceeds : "Thoiu shalt eat the fruit of thine 
own body, the flesh of thy sons and daughters which Jehovah 
thy God hath given thee, in the siege and straitness where- 
with thy enemies shall straiten thee" (53). The prediction 
is repeated in the next few verses with, horrifying details ; and 
we have the testimony of Josephus, an eye-witness (ih.)^ that 
these things actually took place during the siege of Jerusalem 
by the Romans, whereas nothing of the kind is mentioned in 
connection with the siege of ^Nebuchadnezzar. Furthermore, 
the prediction goes on to say : "Ye shall be plucked from off the 
land whither thou goest in to possess it. And Jehovah shall 
scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth 
even to the other end of the earth ; and there shall ye serve 
other gods, which thon hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, 
even wood and stone." The dispersion effected by ^N'ebuchad-. 
nezzar and the Chaldeans was far less extensive than this^ It 
did not extend westward at all. 



208 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Finally, the distresses and persecutions to be endured after 
the last captivity are portrayed by the prophet in a style scarce- 
ly equaled for power and pathos in all the writings of the 
prophets. : ^' And among all these nations thou shalt find no easei, 
and there shall be no rest for thei sole of thy foot : but. Jehovah 
shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pin- 
ing of soul : and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee ; and 
thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance 
of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say. Would God it were 
even ! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning ! 
for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the 
sight of thine eye© which thou shalt see" (63-68). 

The prediction does not end even here. The train of 
thought, interrupted by the twenty-ninth chapter, is resumed 
in the thirtieth, and the prophet adds: ^^And it shall come to 
pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing 
and the curse, which I set before thee, and thou shalt. call t.hem 
to mind among all the nations, whither Jehovah thy God 
hath driven thee, and shalt return unto Jehovah thy God, and 
shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this 
day, thou and thy children, Avith all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul; that then Jehovah thy God will turn thy captivity, 
and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather 
thee from all the peoples, whither Jehovah thy God hath scatr 
tered thea If any of thine outca,sts be in the uttermost, parts 
of the heavenis, from thence will Jehovah thy God gather theei, 
and fro'm thence will he fetch thee: and Jehovah thy God will 
bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou 
shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee 
above thy fathers" (xxx. 1-5). As this gathering is to follow 
the last dispersion, and as it is to bo universal, which the re- 
turn from Babylon was not, it is still in the future; and it 
guarantees the final restoration of Israel to her God, and to 
the land which he swore to her fathers as an everlasting pos- 
session. 

E'ow, it was impossible for the hypothetical D to have ut- 
tered these predictions unless he was miraculously inspired ; 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 209 

and if he was thus inspired it is inconceivable that he would 
have sought to deceive by putting his own words in the mouth 
of Moses. The prophecy, then, must have come from Moses; 
and it is in soime respects the most wonderful prediction of 
the future ever uttea-ed by a prophet of Israel. It antedates 
the predictions of other prophets by from six to eight centuries, 
and it reaches furtKei* down the streiam of time than almost 
any other. It proves Moses to be "the greatest prophet that 
ever lived until the Prophet like unto Moses appeared in the 
person of the Son of God. 

§4. The Question of Feaitd. 

1. The facts set forth in the two' preceding sections neces- 
sarily raise the question whether, if Deuteronomy was written 
in the seventh century, the author was guilty of a fraud. Emi- 
nent scholars who can not be charged with speaking through 
ignorant prejudice, have unhesitatingly affirmed that he was. 
Thus, Edersheim, speaking of this and other deceptions said 
to be found in the Old Testament, says; 

If, in short, what has gained for the history of Israel pre-eminently 
the designation of sacred is mostly due to what a later period has 
•'painted over the original picture": then there is, in plain language, 
only one word to designate all this. That word is fraud (Warburton 
Lectures, 219, 220). 

Principal Cave, speaking of this evolution theory, says: 

It requires the acceptance of the view that the ascription of Deute- 
ronomy to Moses by Deuteronomy itself, is a literary expedient; it 
rquires, in short, belief in the complicity of the holy men of old in a 
series of pious frauds in authorship extending from the days of Moses 
to those of Ezra {Insp. of 0. T., 299). 

J. J. Lias says: 

Whether we apply the strong term "forgery** to it or not, there can 
be little doubt on the part of any high-minded man in any age, that if it 
was composed in the reigns of Manasseh or Josiah, its method was 
most dishonest (Principles of Biblical Criticism, 112). 

Robert Sinker says: 

Was it [Deuteronomy] really a discovery of something which had 
been hidden presumably since the death of Hezekiah, and now, in the 
providence of God, had been brought to light once more? Or, on the 
other hand, was it a fraud? — there is no other word to use if the first 
hypothesis is not true {Lex M., 462). 



210 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Stanley Leathes, speaking of tJie author of tlie book, sajs : 

If he were a priest, his work would somewhat resemble the modern 
historical novel, but it could manifestly lay claim to no authority, 
either in respect to its historical statements, its legal precepts, or its 
gloomy forebodings; but if it was the work of a prophet, then not only 
does he come with no credentials, because unknown, but the very fact 
of his speaking in the name of Moses as no one else*does, entirely nulli- 
fies his authority, because he comes with a lie in his right hand and 
offers it to us as the gift of God {Lex M., 444). 

We close these citatioxis, whicJi might be exteaided much 
further, with the following from Principar Douglas : 

Did Jehovah, the God of truth, make use of deceit and forgery, 
in what professed to be his word by Moses? I believe that forgery is 
an ugly word, and that the critics dislike its use in this connection. 
1 should be glad to gratify them if I found a pleasant word to express 
my meaning (id., 60). 

2. The Charge of Fraud Admitted. When Principal Doug- 
las, as quoted above, says that the word "forgery" in this con- 
nection is disliked by the critics, he means English critics like 
Driver, Ryle, Eobertson Smith, and others. It is scarcely true 
of the originators of this criticism, from whom these English 
scholars have accepted it. The former not only do not deny 
the charge of fraud, but they claim that this is the true repre- 
sentation of the case. Kuenen says: 

It is thus certain that an author of the seventh century, B. C, has 
made Moses himself proclaim that which, in his opinion, it was expedi- 
ent in the interest of the Mosaic party to announce and introduce. At 
a time when notions about literary property were yet in their infancy, 
an act of this kind was not regarded as at all unlawful. Men used 
to perpetrate such fictions as these without any qualms of conscience 
(Religion of Israel, ii. 19). 

According to this, the author was of the "Mosaic party" as 

opposed to the party of the "high places," and he perpetrated 

his fiction to gain a party advantage. This was a fraudulent 

elemeaL in the deception. Again, Kuenen says; 

Deuteronomy was not wrttten for the mere sake of writing, but to 
change the whole condition of the kingdom. The author and his party 
can not have made the execution of their programme depend upon a 
lucky accident. If Hilkiah found the book in the temple, it was put 
there by the adherents of the Mosaic tendency. Or else Hilkiah him- 
self was of their number, and in that case he pretended that he had 
found the book of the law. This provision for the delivery of their 
programme to the king was of a piece with the composition of the 
programme Itself. It is true this deception is much more unjustifiable 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 211 

still than the introduction of Moses as speaking. But we must reflect 
here, also, that the ideas of those days were not as ours, but consider- 
ably less strict. Now or never the Mosaic party had to gain their 
end iib.). 

Kuenen says much more of the same sort, but this is enough 
to* show that one of the chief originators of the so-called critical 
theory deliberately pronounces it a fraud perpetrated for party 
advantage. His remark that men used to perpetrate such fic- 
tions without any qualms of conscience, is undoubtedly true 
of a certain class of men, and it is equally true of a similar 
class at the present day. Witness the forged letter which came 
so near defeating the election of James A. Garfield to the 
Presidency of our republic. To lie and cheat for party ad- 
vantage is in these days called ^^practical politics." It seems, 
if you believe Kuenen, that they had "practical polities'' 
among the Jews in the days of Josiah, and that Deuteronomy 
is one of its products. 

Wellhausen quotes Reuss, the eminent French critic, as say- 
ing that "Deuteronomy is the book that the priests pretended 
to find at the temple in the time of King Josiah" (Prolegomena, 
p. 4) ; and Wellhausen himself says, "In all circles where ap- 
preciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is 
recognized that it was composed in the same age in which it 
was discovered." Putting the two together, we have the asser- 
tion that the priests "pretended" to find it, knowing that it 
had not been lost, and that it had been recently written. They 
then, practiced an imposition on the king and the people. 

Prof. T. K. ChejTie, not a German rationalist, but an Eng- 
lish clergyman and a professor in Oxford University, calls at- 
tention to the assured fact that the king was the only person 
who was "vehemently moved" by the reading of the book, while, 
as he asserts, Hilkiah, Shaphan and Huldah were imperturba- 
ble, and adds : "The easiest sup]X)sition is that these threei per- 
sons had agreed together, unknown, to the king, on their course 
of action." According to this, the whole of the procedure on 
the part of these i>ersons described in the Book of Kings, was 
a preconcerted affair, and, strange to say, this English clergy- 
man suggests that "to the priests and prophets who loved spiritr 



212 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

iial religion God had revealed that now was the time to take 
a bold step forward, and accomplish the work w^hich the noblest 
servants of Jehovah had so long desired" (Founders of 0. T. 
Criticism, 267, 268). With respect to this last remark, it is 
not surprising that Dr. Eobert Skinner exclaims : "It has been 
reserved for an Anglican clergyman to make the Deity him- 
self an instigator of the fraud, call it by what pleasant 
©uphemisim we will" {Lex. M,, 464). 

We now see that the parties at the twO' extremes of this 
controversy — those who oppose the new theory, and those who 
have originated and developed iti — are agreed in regarding the 
book as a fraud perpetrated by the joint action of its com- 
posers and its pretended discoverers. 

3. The Charge Denied. Some other scholars, chiefly our 
British and American critics, have undertaken to strike a 
golden mean, and, while admitting that the use of the name 
of Moses was a fiction, to deny that a fraud was perpetrated. 
Professor Driver has made the most elaborate and ingenious 
argument on this point, and we shall follow in the main his 
presentation of the case. It is found in his Introduction, pages 
89-93. He begins the discussion by the following statement 
of the issue: 

If it be true that Deuteronomy is the composition of another than 
Moses, in what light are we to regard it? In particular, does this view 
of its origin detract from its value and authority as a part of the 
Old Testament Canon? The objection is commonly made, that, if this 
be the origin of the book, it is a "forgery;" the author, it is said, has 
sought to shelter himself under a great name, and to secure by fiction 
recognition or authority for a number of laws devised by himself (89). 

Strange to say, his first argument in reply to this objec- 
tion is, that Deuteo-onomy does not claim to be written by 
Moses : whenever the author speaks himself, he purports to give 
a description in the third 'person of what Moses did or said. 
It is sufficient, in answei- to this, to refer the reader to what 
we have set forth in the first division of this section. But we 
add that Driver's defense of this allegation, given in a foot- 
note, is as remarkable as the allegation itself. He says: "Un- 
doubtedly the third person may have been used by Moses; but 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, 212 

it is unreasonable to assert that he must have used it, or to 
contend that passages in. which it occurs could only have been 
written by him.'' The last two clauses miss their mark. ^No 
one has ever so asserted or contended, and the admission in 
the first clause, that Moses may have used the third person, 
empties the argument based on this usage of all the force which 
he imagines it to possess. 

He does not forget that in addition to what is said about 
writing ^^this law," the author asserts that Moses delivered 
orally its chief contents before they were written ; and he aims 
to set this aside by the following assertions : 

The true author is thus the writer who introduces Moses in the 
third person; and the discourses which he is represented as having 
spoken, fall in consequence into the same category as the speeches in 
the historical books, some of which largely, and other entirely, are 
the compositions of the compilers and are placed by them in the 
mouths of historical characters. This freedom in ascribing speeches 
to historical personages is characteristic, more or less, of ancient his- 
torians generally; and it certainly was followed by Hebrew histori- 
ans (90). 

If what is here said of Hebrew historians is true^ it by 
no means follows that a man who had not the slightest pretense 
of authority to make laws, could without fraud write laws and 
put them into the mouth, of an ancient lawgiver ; and especially, 
as in the case of the law regarding altars, could abolish the law 
which it is conceded that God gave through Moses, and, in 
the name of Moses, enact a different one — one which, acco'rd- 
ing to our critics themselves, was intended to work a complete 
revolution in the divinely appointed ritual of the nation. Pro- 
fessor Driver very innocently overlooks this obvious distinc- 
tion. 

But what is the evidence that Hebrew historians did com- 
pose speeches and put them in the mouths of historical person- 
ages. ^'The proof lies," says Professor Driver, '^in the great 
similarity of style which those speeches constantly exhibit to 
the parts of the narrative which are evidently the work of the 
compiler himself." This is an old argument of the enemies of 
the Bible. It has been employed to discredit not only Old 
Testament books, but those of the ^ew Testament likewise. 



214 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

especially the Book of Acts and the Gospel of Jothn. The most 
that can be said in its favor is, that in reporting actual speeches 
the historians have in some instances expressed the speaker's 
idea in somewhat different words; but to charge them with 
putting speeches into the mouths of men which they never 
uttered at all, is to charge them with the same fraud which is 
charged upon the author of Deuteronomy, and of which he 
was certainly guilty if he was not Moses. Driveo* further says : 

It is an altogether false view of the laws in Deuteronomy to treat 
them as the author's inventions. ... On the whole, the laws of Deute- 
ronomy are unquestionably derived from pre-existent usage; and the 
object of the author is to insist upon their importance, and to supply 
motives for their observance. The new element in Deuteronomy is not 
the laws, but their parenetic setting (91). 

This is certainly true of many of these laws, especially of 
those which are mere repetitions in different words of those 
contained in Exodus and ^ximbers; but the most distinctive 
law in the whole book, and one which abrogated local sanctu- 
aries, if we believe Driver himself and all the scholars of his 
school, is confessedly new, and not only was it new, but it 
formally abolished the law of sacrifices which God himself 
gave to Israel in the beginning. It required the destruction 
of all the altars on high places which had been up to that time 
places of worship approved by the law of God. And this is 
done, not, as we have just said, by any one clothed with author- 
ity, but by an irresponsible writer whose very name never be- 
came public. . And this was not tho only new law which this un- 
authorized author enacted, as we have seen in the section pre- 
ceding this. This excuse for the hypothetical D is too thin 
a veil to cover his fraud. This is the way the matter would 
stand if the fraud had stopped with the mere writing of the 
book; but the worst part of it is that the author and others 
entered into a conspiracy to deceive the king, without which 
the attempted rev^olution would not have been effected, and the 
book would have fallen still-born. 

Again our critic says: 

Deuteronomy may be described as the prophetic re-formulation, 
and adaptation to new needs, of an older legislation (91) 



The book of Deuteronomy. 215 

How can it be thus described, when it contains new laws 
never before known in Israel; when, as Driver himself per- 
sistently argues, it contradicts many of the provisions of the 
older legislation, provisions enacted by divine authority; and 
when those who contrived it had distinctly in view the abro- 
gation of some of the older laws ? When writing as an apo-l- 
ogist for the book, he seems to totally forget what he wrote 
as its critic. 

Finally, we are told that "there is nothing in Deuteronomy 
implying an interested or dishonest motive on the part of the 
post-Mosaic author: and this being so, its moral and spiritual 
greatness remains unimpaired; its inspired authority is in no 
respect less than that of any other part of the Old Testament 
Scriptures which happens to be anonymous" {ih.). In mak- 
ing this statement, our critic again forgets that on the critical 
hypothesis one leading purpose of the party to which D and 
his colaborers belonged, was to gain a victory over the priests 
and worshipers at the high places, whose ritual had been from 
the days of Moses divinely authorized, and to concentrate all 
offerings and tithes at the temple in Jerusalem. Was this not 
an interested motive ? Did it not secure a party triumph to 
the so-called Mosaic party ? And did it not turn into the 
treasury of the Jerusalem priests a revenue of which the 
priests of the high places were by the same act deprived ? And 
this, too, an income to which the latter priests were by the 
ancient law of God clearly entitled ? Suppose that a conspir- 
acy made up among the Dissenters in England, who conscien- 
tiously believe that the flfood. of the English people would be 
promoted by the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, 
should succeed in A\Titing and palming off upon king and Par- 
liament a series of discourses professedly delivered by the 
apostle Paul, and recently found in an Egyptian sepulchre, 
condemning in most unmistakable terms the existence of a 
state church ; would the Anglican clergy, on giving up their 
rich estates and endowments, agree that the authors of that 
book had no ^'interested or dishonest motive" ? I think not. 



216 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Professor Driver is now, I believe, a canon in that church. 
The case being altered would alter the case. 

It is very strange, in view of what our critic sajs of Deu- 
teronomy in this very defense of its author, to hear him finally 
speak of the ^^inspiration" of its author, and to claim that this 
is no less than that of any other Old Testament writer. It 
Vixmld be interesting to see from his pen a definition of in- 
spiration. We hear a great deal in this country about a pro- 
hibition that does not prohibit. We read a great deal more 
in the writings of "modern scientific critics" about an inspira- 
tion that did not inspire. 

The allusion in the last citation from Driver, to the ^'moral 
and spiritual greatness" of Deuteronomy, implies a merited 
eulogy on this book. In these respects it stands high above 
all other writings in the Old Testament, unless they be some 
of the Psalms. It is the especial merit of Andrew Harper 
tu exalt this element of the book as does no other writer of my 
acquaintance. This characteristic lifts the author of the book 
as high as heaven above the resort to trickery and deception 
in order to win a cause against an opposing party. An author 
in the days of Josiah whose soul was filled with such senti- 
ments, and capable of expressing them as he does, could not 
possibly have descended to the composition of this book as we 
have it, and to its publication under the circumstances 
described in the Book of Kings. This alone is sufiicient proof 
that the book came as it professes to have come, from, the heart 
and brain of Moses, as that heart and brain were fired and 
guided by the Spirit of God. 

Prof. C. A. Briggs, in arguing the question of fraud, fol- 
lows close on the track of Driver ; but he makes one admission 
which is worthy of note. Answering the argument that the 
author of Kings and the prophet Jeremiah would not have 
joined hands to deceive the people, even with the pious end 
in view of serving Jehovah and saving the nation, he says : 

This is valid as against a new code, but not as against a ne^W 
codification of an ancient code (H. C. of H., 87). 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 217 

So far, then, as the book did contain a new code, our argii- 
nient is admitted to be valid; and it is also admitted by all 
the critics that the distinctive feature of DeuteTonomy, that 
feature which led to Josiah's religious revolution, was new. 
They insist that it had never before been heard of. Professoir 
Briggs, then, should admit that on his own shofwing a fraud 
was committed in which neither the author of Kings nor tlie 
prophet Jeremiali could have joined hands. But they did join 
hands in enforcing the law of Deuteronomy, and this is proof 
enough that the book did not originate as these critics have 
affirmed. 

We close tiiis discussion by noticing a single sentence in 
Andrew Harper^s argument on the same question. He says: 

If we take into account the character of Deuteronomy as only an 
extension and adaptation of the book of the covenant set in a frame- 
work of affectionate exhortation, and that all men then believed that 
the book of the covenant was Mosaic, we can see better how such action 
might be considered legitimate {Com., 30). 

Here this writer, like DrivcT and Briggs, forgets for the 
moment that, according to the critical hypothesis which they 
all advocate, Deuteronomy was not a mere "expaoision and 
adaptation of the book of the covenant;" for it contained pro- 
visions contradictory of some in the book of the covenant, and 
it sought to abrogate the law in that book authorizing a plu- 
rality of altars, and to substitute a law in direct opposition to 
it. Furthermore, as it is here admitted that "all men then 
believed the book of the covenant was Mosaic,'' it follows that 
all men would have been compelled to see in this new book 
an attempt to abolish in the name of Moses a law which Moses 
had given, and to do this after Moses had been dead for seven 
centuries. 

The reader has now before him in full the attempt which 
the intermediary critics have made, in opposition to the fathers 
of their system on the one hand, and to the ant-agonists of it 
on the other, to explain away the fraud involved in their theory 
of the origin of this book. If fraud was not perpetrated, the 
book was written by Moses as it claims to have been. 



218 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

§5. Positive Evidence in the Book of Joshua. 

1. Jehovah's Charge to Joshua. We find in Joshua a direct 
continuance of the history in lumbers and Deuteronomy. The 
former closes with this statement: ''These are the command- 
ments and the judgements, which Jehovah commanded by the 
hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the plains of 
Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.'' . The latter closed its his- 
torical portion, before the account of the death of Moses was 
appended, with the statement that Moses wrote "this law." 
The Book of Joshua opens with an address by Jehovah to 
Joshua, in which occurs this admonition : "Only be strong and 
very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which 
Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the 
right hand or to the left, that thou mayest have good success 
whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not de- 
part out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day 
a^ night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that 
is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosr 
perous, and then thou shalt have good success" (i. 7, 8). 
These words are worthy of Jehovah, and it is hard to believe 
that they were written by some human being and put into his 
mouth. If they were spoken as here described, they make it 
absolutely certain that when Joshua took command of the hosts 
of Israel he already held in his hand the book of the law of 
Moses. 

We shall now see how this piece of history is dealt with 

by our critics. Driver paves the way for an esplanation by 

saying : 

In this book, JE, before it was combined with P, passed through 
the hands of a writer who expanded it in different ways, and who, being 
strongly imbued with the spirit of Deuteronomy, may be termed the 
Deuteronomic editor, and denoted by the abbreviation D^. The parts 
added by this writer are in most cases readily recognized by their 
characteristic style {Int., 104). 

That the reader who is not an expert in critical signs may- 
understand this, let us remember that according to the anal;)i:i- 
cal theory of the ^^Hexateuch" the hypothetical writers J and 
E each wrote a narrative beginning with Adam and coming 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. ^19 

down to the death of Joshua. The two were combined in one 
by an editor, and the resulting document was JE. But our 
Joshua is not the original left by JE. Before it reached its 
present form it was edited by an author who made additions 
to it "in the spirit of Deuteronomy," and on this account he is 
called D^. He wrote, of course, after Deuteronomy had beiezi 
discovered by Hilkiah. All passages, therefore, which would 
prove that the latter was written before Joshua, were added to 
the original Joshua by this D^. So, on the next page, Driveir 



Chapter i. is based probably upon an earlier and shorter narrative, 
from which, for instance, the substance of verses 1, 2, 10 and 11 may 
be derived, but in its present form it is the composition of D^. 

And what is the proof of this? The next sentence gives 
it: "It is constructed almost entirely of phrases borrowed froim 
Deuteronomy." Then follows a list of these phrases. 

Let us suppose, now, that all the phrases cited, and as many 
more as you please, were actually borrowed froon Deuteron- 
omy; and what does it prove? It proves precisely what Dri- 
ver aims to prove by it, that Deuteronomy was vn-itten before 
these passages in Joshua were. But that is precisely what is 
true if Deuteronomy was written by Moses. Its bearing, then, 
on the question whether Moses is the author of Deuteronomy, 
is absolutely nil. It leaves the evidence from this first chap- 
ter of Joshua, that he had in hand the book of the law of 
Moses, untouched; and this chapter, if it stood alone, would 
prove conclusively, to a candid mind, that the book of the law 
came from the hand of Moses. 

In thus disposing of this evidence. Driver has not only 

made an argument that is good for the Mosaic authorship, but 

he has inadvertently done the same in another remark follow^ 

ing the one first quoted above: 

The chief aim of these Deuteronomic additions to JE is to illustrate 
and emphasize the zeal shown by Joshua in fulfilling Mosaic ordinances, 
especially the command to extirpate the native population of Canaan, 
and the success which in consequence crowned his efforts (104). 

The command "to extirpate the native population of Ca- 
naan'' was, then, a "Mosaic ordinance," was it? It certainly 



220 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

was. But it is found O'lily in Deuteronomy. In the otheir 
books tbere is tlie command to ^^drive them out" (Ex. xxiii. 27- 
33; E^um. xxxiii. 50-56), but only in Deuteronomy is found 
the command to extirpate them (xx. 16-18). This, then, is 
"the Mosaic ordinance'' the fulfilling of which showed the zeal 
of Joshua, and thus Driver has inadvertently admitted that 
Deuteronomy is Mosaic. Men often reveal the truth by their 
very efforts to conceal it. The case is much like that in the 
old story of the man who was sued by his neighbor for a kettle 
which he had borrowed and sent home with a crack in it. His 
plea before the magistrate was this: "In the first place., may 
it please Your Honor, I never borrowed the kettle. In the 
second place, it was cracked when I got it. In the third place, 
it was sound when I took it home.'' 

2. The Case of the Altar Ed. The twenty-second chapter 
of Joshua contains a narrative which, if true, demonstrates the 
pre-existence of the Book of Deuteronoimy, and therefore its 
Mosaic origin. It does so by showing that the distinctive legis- 
lation of Deuteronomy as interpreted by destructive critics, 
the restriction of sacrifices undeo* the law to one central altar, 
existed and was in force when Joshua succeeded Moses, The 
warriors of the two and a half tribes whose homes had been 
assigned them east of the Jordan, having served with their 
brethren through the war of conquest, are dismissed by Joshua 
with his blessing, and they march away to their families (1-8). 
When they reach the vicinity of the Jordan they build an al- 
tar, probably on a mountain overlooking the Jordan valley, so 
large that it is styled in the quaint phraseology of the text, 
"a great altar to see to" (ix. 10). The report of this under- 
taking spreads like wild-fire through all the tribes, "and the 
whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered them- 
selves together at Shiloh, to go up against them to wao?" (xi. 
12). This shows that the erection of another altar than the 
one constructed by Moses, was held to be unlawful, and to such 
a degree criminal as to justify making war on those who might 
be guilty of it. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 221 

At this point anotJior law, the denial of the existence of 
which at this early date is common, with our critics, is care- 
fully ob®er\^ed. It is the law that w^hen Israel should hear 
that any city of their people had turned away to idolatry they 
should 'inquire, and make search, and ask diligently," and 
"if it be true, and the thing cei*tain," they should go and smite 
the inhabitants and utterly destroy the city (Deut^ xiii. 12-18). 
Believing that the two and a half tribes were erecting this 
altar as an act of rebellion against Jehovah (verse 16), and 
that the law just cited was applicable in the case, the people 
sent Phinehas, who was yet alive, with ten princes, one repre- 
senting each of the tribes, to make the careful inquiry enjoined 
by this law (13-20). 

The remonstrance was met by a most emphatic and indig- 
nant denial that they were erecting the altar fo^r the purpose 
of offering on it any kind of sacrifice ; and the respondents 
admit that if they were, they w^ould not deserve to be spared 
(21-24). They state their real purpose to be the erection of 
a monument to bear witness in coming ages that they, although 
separated from the main body of the nation by the river and 
its deep valley, were a constituent part of the people who of- 
fered sacrifice to Jehovah on an altar of this pattern (24-29). 
The deputation was pleased with the answer, Phinehas pro- 
nounced a benediction on the builders, and all Israel was de- 
lighted when the commissioners returned and made their re- 
port (30-34). 

^ow, whoever wrote this account, and whatever date may 
be assign^ed to the Book of Joshua, if the account is true, all 
debate about the Mosaic authorship of the Book of Deuteron- 
omy ought here to terminate. 

But let us hear how the deetructive critics dispose of this 
evidence. Of course, they must dispose of it or give up their 
whole contention about the origin of Deuteronomy. Robert- 
son Smith says of it: 

Chap. xxii. 9-34 is a very peculiar piece, which has its closest 
parallel in Judges xx. Both chapters are for the most part post- 
priestly, and certainly not historical (0. T., 413). 



222 THE AUTH0R8HH* OF 

Xo reason whatever does he assign for this decision. But^ 
reason or no reason, he was farced to the decision tO' prevent 
his theorj from breaking down. It was a case of necessity 
somewhat like that of Uncle Remus^s rabbit : 

"Br'er Fox was chasing Br'er Rabbit, and getting closer 
and closer, closer and closer, so Br'er Rabbit dumb a trea" 

'^Hold on. Uncle Remiis,'' said the little boy who was listen- 
ing, "you know a rabbit can't olimb a tree.'' 

"I know he can't, honey, but dat rabbit was 'hleeged to 
climb a tree." 

Professor Driver treats the pass^e with a little more re- 
spect. He says; 

The source of verses 9-34 is uncertain. The phraseology is in the 
main that of P; but the narrative does not display throughout the 
characteristic style of P, and in some parts of it there occur expressions 
which are not those of P. Either a narrative of P. has been combined 
with elements from another source in a manner which makes it 
difficult to effect a satisfactory analysis, or the whole of it is the work 
of a distinct writer, whose phraseology is in part that of P, but not 
entirely {Int., 113). 

This is foggy enough for any German author. If it is the 
best that the clear-headed Driver can do, Roibertson Smith 
might well say, as quoted above, that the passage is "a very 
peculiar piece." If Driver could settle down on the assertion 
that P wrote it, this would place its origin nearly a thousand 
years after the days of Joshua and Phinehas, and it would be 
equivalent to Robertson Smith's flat assertion that it is cer- 
tainly unhistoricad. But Driver can not do this. He runs 
about through the fog trying to find a place for it, and finally 
drops it>, noibody knows whera 

Professor Bennett, editor of the Polychrome Josihua, suc- 
ceeds no better than Smith or Driver. After remarking that 
^^the problem of this section is very difficult," he says: 

As it bears no sufficient marks of having passed through the hands 
of the Deuteronomic editor, we gather that the story in its original 
form did not seem to him of an edifying character, and was therefore 
omitted from his edition of Joshua (Notes on Joshua, in loco). 

This Deuteronomic editor, then, called by Driver and 
others D^, wi-ote an "edition of Joshua" ! This stoay was al- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 223 

ready in existence, and D^ Lad seen it, but, seeing nothing 
edifying in it, he left it ooit of his book. But why could he 
see nothing edifying in it, when it so completely confirmed 
his own assumption that Deuteronomy came from Moses, and 
when it presented Phinelias, the two and a half tribes, and all 
Israel as displaying a devotion to the law of God, and a re- 
gard for one another, that is truly edifying? This is a lame 
excuse invented to account for an assumption that is lamer 
still. Bennett adds: 

The original story can not therefore have had for its moral the 
obligation to restrict Israel to a single altar; for to establish this 
restriction is a main object of Deuteronomy. 

This means, that if the Deuteronomic editor had seen in 
the story the purpose to restrict Israel to one altar, he would 
have copied it into his edition of Joshua. Well, if he could 
not see that, he was blind ; for Robertson Smith saw it. Driver 
sees it, Bennett sees it and everybody now living can see it. 
It is as plain as the sun in the sky. These two authors would 
have done better to follow Smith's plan, deny the truth of 
the story, and stop thera Smith saw, no doubt, that to go 
further would be to run into a fog bank, and he prudently 
kept out. The rabbit might have run into a briar patch, but 
there the fox would have caught him ; so it was prudent in 
Uncle Remus to let him climb a tree. 

3. The Devoted in Jericho. When Jehovah gave direc- 
tions about the destruction of Jericho, he is said to have ut- 
tered tliese words: "The city shall be devoted, even it and all 
that is therein, to Jehovah: only Rahab the harlot shall live, 
she and all that are w4th her in the house, because she hid 
the messengers that we sent. And ye, in anywise keep your- 
selves from the devoted thing, lest when ye have devoted it, 
ye take of the devoted thing: so shall ye make the camp of 
Israel devoted, and tro'uble it" (vi. 17, 18). 

Xow, without some preceding instruction in reference to 
the meaning of the word "devoted," this command would have 
been very obscure, even if it had been at all intelligible to Is- 
rael. It is now obscure to manv a Bible reader who has not 



224 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

learned somethiiig of it elseiwheire. AH such readers have to 
take it foT granted that a command on which the life of every 
man in tlie camp might be involved was understood bj the 
people, though he can not clearly understand it himself. But 
what previous source of understanding did the people have on 
the subject? If they weire already in possession of the Books 
of Leviticus and Deuteironomy, all was plain enough; for in 
the former they wonld have read, "IN'o devoted thing, that a 
man shall devote unto Jehovah of all that he hath, whether of 
man or beast, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold 
or redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy unto Jehovah. 
Kone devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be ran- 
somed; he shall surely be put to death'' (Leiv. xxvii. 28, 29). 
And in the latter they would have read: "But of the cities of 
these peoples, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an in- 
heritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breiatheth: but 
thou shalt utterly destroiy [devote] them" (xx. 16, 17). By 
these two books of the law the people would have known what 
it meant to devote any person ot thing, and from the latter 
especially they would have known that the cities of Canaan 
w^ere to be thus devoted. It follows, that if this account in 
Joshua is true, these laws existed before Joshua took Jerioho, 
and consequently that they came, as they professed to have 
come, from the hand of Moses. 

This conclusion being fatal to the critical hypothesis, our 
critics are compelled to deny the truth of the story. We should 
expect them in this instance, as in the two disposed of above, 
to ascribe the account to D^, or to some other writer of later 
date than Deuteronomy. But this is not their device. For 
some reason best known to themselves, they assign the stoiry 
to JE, the composite document that was in circulation befoTe 
Deuteronomy was found by Hilkiah. (See Driver, Int., 106; 
D. of H.; Addis, 106, cf. 210.) To the full extent that this 
assignment has any probability, it is evidence in favor of the 
early date of both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and evidence 
furnished by the critics themselves, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 225 

The Po'lycthroaiie Josliua changes colors thirty-eight times 
to represent the many sources whence some later critics imagine 
the twenty-seven verses of this chapter to have been derived. 
This is one of the countless absurdities in which the analytical 
critics involve themselves. 

4. The Altar at Mount Ebal, and the Reading. The 
account of this well-known transaction is given in Josh. viii. 
30-35. It is introduced with these statements: "Then Joshua 
built an altar unto Jehovah the God of Israel, in moimt Ebal, 
as Moses the servant of God commanded the children of Israel, 
as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of 
unhewn stones, upon which no man had lift up any iron: and 
they offered thereon burnt offerings unto Jehovah, and peace 
offerings." 

Here it is expressly stated that this, and the rest of these 
proceedings, had been commanded by Moses, "as it is written 
in the book of the law of Moses." But the only book in which 
such an order was written, is the Book of Deuteronomy (xi. 29 ; 
xxvii. 1-14). If, then, the account in Joshua is not false; if, 
in other words, Joshua actually built this altar, and conducted 
the other proceedings here described, then beyond all possibil- 
ity of doubt the Book of Deuteronomy came from Moses. 
There is no way in which to avoid this conclusion except by 
robbing this account of all truthfulness. This the destructive 
critics do without hesitation. It is with them another case 
of necessity. They ascribe the account to D^ (Driver, 106). 
This means that, after the publication of Deuteronomy in the 
reign of Josiah, an editor "imbued with the spirit of Deuter 
ronomy" got out a new edition of Joshua., and inserted in it 
this account And why did he insert it ? He could have had 
no motive except to make it appear that the command in Deu- 
teronomy was obeyed by Joshua; and this, when he knew that 
Deuteronomy was written centuries after the death of Joshua, 
and that Joshua had never heard of such a command. In 
other words, Moses had been falsely represented in Deuteron- 
omy as having given this command, and then, to bolster up 
this false ascription to Moses, Joshua is falsely represented 



226 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

as obeying the command. All this was done, and yet our 
apologetical critics insist that no fraud was committed. It is 
becoming wearisome to note how often these critics deliberately 
set aside, as untrue, pieces of history for no other reason than 
that they conflict with their critical theory. They persist in 
this unscientific method in the boasted naime of "modern scien- 
tific criticism.'' 

5. The Doom of the Gibeonites. The account in the ninth 
chapter of Joshua of the cunning^ devicei of the Gibeonites, 
contains another proof that Joshua was in possesion of the 
Book of Deuteronoftiy. It uproots, at one blow, two of the 
"assured results'' of "modern scientific criticism." Three 
times in the latter part of the chapter it is as'serted, once in 
the words of Joshua,, and twice in those of the author, that 
the Gibeonites were doomed to be hewers of wood and drawers 
of water. It is expressed, the third time, in these words: 
"And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers 
of water for the congregation, and for the altar of Jehoivah, 
unto this day, in the place which he should choose" (verse 27). 
In the lips of Joshua, pronouncing the sentence, the expression 
is, "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of 
my God" (23). 

If this account is true, it follows that the tabernacle here 
called by Joshua "the house of my God," had a real existence, 
contrary to the united voice of the destructive critics. It fol- 
lows also, that Israel then had, in contradistinction to the many 
altars of the critics, one styled "the altar of Jehovah;" and 
that to this the Gibeonites were to bring water and wood "in 
the place which he should choose." This evidence is so obvi- 
ous and so incontrovertible that the critics are again compelled, 
by the demands of their foregone conclusions, to pronounce 
it false. They ascribe the twenty-seventh verse to JE, thus 
admitting its existence before the date they assign to D, though 
only as a tradition; but they detach the last clause, "in the 
place which he shall choose," and assign it to D^ (Driver, Int.^ 
107). To such trifling they find it necessary to descend, in 
order to keep Deuteronomy this side of Joshua. The Poly- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 22f 

chrome Joshua disposes of this clause in the same way, and 
it changes colors twenty-one times in representing the various 
sources of this account of the Gibeonites. 

6. The Cities of Refuge. In Josh. xx. 1, 2, we read: 
"And Jehovah spake to Josihua, saying, Speak to the children 
of Israel, saying, Assign you the cities of refuge, whereof I 
spake unto you by the hand of Moses;" and this is followed, 
by the account of formailly setting apart six cities, which are 
named (7, 8). Xow, unless some one has here put into the 
mouth of Jehovah words which he never uttered, and which 
are not true, he had, previously to this time, given command- 
ment "by the hand of Moses" respecting the assignment of 
these cities. As the Pentateuch now stands, the first command 
on the subject is in the thirty-fifth chapter of Numbers. 
There the order to appoint cities of refuge is given, the number 
of them is stated, and the law by which their use is to be regu- 
lated is elaborated. No one of tho cities is named. Next, in 
Deut iv. 41-43, it is said that Moses, after the conquest of the 
country east of the Jordan, selected, three of theim, and their 
names are given. Next, in Deut. xix. 1-13, Moses directs that 
after they shall have possessed the country west of the Jordan, 
they shall select three cities of refuge on that side; he repeats 
the law less elaborately, and orders that if Jehovah shall enlarge 
their borders, and give them all the land promised to their 
fathers, they shall add three other cities on that side, so that 
all manslayers may have the benefit of a place of refuge. Their 
borders were never thus extended until the reign of David, 
and they remained so only till the close of Solomon's reign, 
and consequently these three additional cities were never 
appointed. 

Now, whatever may be the origin of the words quoted above 
from Joshua, they refer back to these passages in Numbers 
and Deuteronomy ; or, at least, to the latter. If God actually 
spoke them, as is here asserted, then Deuteronomy, or Num- 
bers, or both, had certainly been A\Titten before Joshua selected 
the three western cities. On the other hand, if these books 
had not been already written, then some editor who lived after 



228 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

they were written, put tl^se words into the mouth of Jehovah 
— ^^vords which he never uttered — for the purpose of making 
people believe that Deuteronomy did precede Joshua, and did 
come from the hand of Moses. Thus again the critics are 
found guilty of repudiating a piece of history w^hich stands 
in the way of their theory. This false ascription of words 
to Jehovah is credited to P, the writer of the laws in !N'um- 
bers, who wrote after the Babylonian exile (Driver, Int,, 112 ; 
Poly. Josh., in loco). 

7. The Levitical Cities. In the twienty-first chapter of 
Joshua we have an account of the distribution of forty-eight 
cities among the Levites, and it is preceded by this statement: 
^^Then came near the heads of the fathers' houses of the Levites 
unto Eleazar the priest, and unto Joshua the son of !N^un, and 
unto the heads of the fathers' houses of the tribes of the chil- 
dren of Israel; and they spake unto thean at Shiloh in the 
land of Canaan, saying, Jehovah coimmanded by the hand of 
Moses to give us cities to dwell in, with the suburbs thereof 
for our cattle." This command is found in !N'um. xxxv. 1-8. 
Did the Levites thus come to Eleazar and Joshua, and the 
elders, w^ith their petition? Did they thus say that Jehovah 
had commanded ^'by the hand of Moses" that the cities should 
be given them ? With one voice the destructive critics answer, 
!N'o. This piece of history must be rejected ; and why ? Be- 
cause it demands the pre-existence of the Book of ^N'umbers. 
And if it is not true, by whom and for what purpose was it 
written in this book ? The answer is that it was wT-itten by 
P, a thousand years aft^'r Joshua, and for the purpose of still 
further leading the readers of Joshua to accept tho deception 
that !N"umbers preceded Joshua and came from Moses. And 
yet, no fraud was perpetrated ! 

After this review of the evidence for the Mosaic author- 
ship of Deuteronomy and the earlier law-books which is fur- 
nished by the Book of Joshua, the reader can more adequately 
appreciate the remark of Robertson Smith, "I exclude the 
Book of Joshua." (See page 137.) 



the book of deuteronomy. 229 

§6. In the Book of Judges. 

In answering the charge of Kobertson Smith that the whole 
Book of Judges is Levitically false (Part First, §7, 3), I have 
not only refuted, I think, every argument in support of that 
charge, but I have turned some of them into evidence to the 
contrary. There remain for notice in the present section 
only a few passages which clearly imply that the law was well 
known during the constant violation of some of its precepts in 
that period. 

1. We cite, first, Jehovah's quotation of his own former 
words. Speaking through the angel at Bochim, he declared: 
"I said I will never break my covenant with you : and ye shall 
make no covenant with the people of this land ; ye shall break 
down their altars : but ye have not hearkened to my voice : why 
have ye done this ? Wherefore I also said, I mil not drive them 
out from before you ; but they shall be as thorns in your side, 
and their gods shall be a snare to you" (ii. 1-3). Here are 
three things which Jehovah declares that he had said to them 
befora But when had he said them? The first, "I will 
never break my covenant with you," is found in Lev. xxvi. 44 ; 
the second, '^Ye shall make no covenant with the people of 
the land," is found in Ex. xxiii. 32, and also in Deut vii. 2; 
and the third, ^'I will not drive them out before you," in Josh, 
xxiii. 13. The words employed astume that the people 
addressed had knowledge that Jehovah had said these things. 
They could doubtless remember having heard the utterance 
that is found in Joshua ; but the passages in Exodus, Leviticus 
and Deuteronomy were uttered before any of the generation 
addressed by the angel were bom. Their source of informa- 
tion, then, must have been the written documents; and from 
this we are safe in inferring that these three books came from 
Moses. 

There is just one way to evade the force of this evidence, 
and that is the one usual with our critics, to deny the reality 
of the angel's visit and rebuke. In the Polychrome Judges 
the account is relegated to an author or editor who ^vrote after 



230 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the Babylonian exile (p. 3; cf. 46). What motive could have 
prompted a writer at this date to invent and add this story, 
is not stated even conjecturally ; but the motive which prompts 
the modern scientific critic to invent this comjectural editor, 
and to charge him with inventing this story, is quite manifest. 
As the passage stands, it falsifies the theory of the late origin 
of the books which it refers to, and it must be gotten rid of 
at any cost of reason and common sense. 

In view of these quotations from Exodus, Leviticus and 
Deuteronomy, it may be well in passing to notice De Wette^s 
reckless statement that "the book [Judges] contains no direct 
reference, or even allusion, to the Pentateuch and Book of 
Joshua" (quoted by Yalpey French, Lex Mosaica, 127). 
Even G. F. Moore, editor of the Polychrome Judges, admits 
that the speech ascribed to the angel is "made up of reminis- 
cences from Exodus, Deuteronomy and Joshua" (51). 

2. The Is^azarite Yow. When the angel of Jehovah 
appeared to the wife of Manoah tO' announce the birth of Sam- 
son, he said to her, "]N'b razor shall come upon his head: for 
the child shall be a !Nazirite unto God from the womb" (xiii. 
6). The woman understood this, and so did her husband whem 
it was told to him. But how did they know what a JiTazirita 
was? The word is not found in any earlier portion of the 
Scriptures, except in the sixth chapter of Numbers, where the 
law of the INazirite vow is given. If that law had been given 
by Moses, all is explained ; but, if not, there is no explanation 
of the fact that Manoah and his wife both knew at oncC' what 
a Naziritc was. They evidently knew also the connection 
between being a Nazirite and not having a razor to come upon 
his head. 

We should naturally suppose that the critics would ascribe 
this account to some editor who lived after the date which they 
assign to the Book of ^NTumbers, and thus prevent it from 
proving the early date of that book. But no, they unitedly 
ascribe it to J, as one of the traditions which had come down 
orally through several centuries. Robertson Smith tries to 
account for it by the custom of ancient peoples burning their 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 231 

hair as a sign of mourning, or as an offering to some god. 
But this is a palpable failure; for Samson never burnt his 
hair, but wore it until the treacherous Delilah mt it off; and 
even then there is no account of its being burned. Professor 
Briggs argues that Samson could not have been under the 
Xazirite vow of Xmnbers, because he handled the jaw-bone 
of an ass, whereas the Xaririte of Numbers was forbidden 
to touch anything unclean. But the professor strangely for- 
gets that Samson was not very scrupulous about keeping the 
law, ajid even if he had been ever so sci*upulous, Avhen more 
than a thousand Philistines ^'^re rushing at him to kill him, 
and the jaw-bone of an ass was the only wea|x>n in sight, he 
could not hesitate to use it. If Professor Briggs were a China- 
man, and about as well instructed in American customs as he 
is in the Scriptures, on reading in a newspaper that an Amer- 
ican had drawn from his pocket a pistol and killed his assail- 
ant, he would exclaim. That can not be true; for in America 
it is unlawful for a man tO' carry a pistol in his pocket ! Prof. 
G. F. Moore, in Polychrome Judges, says that the "stories of 
Samson," as he styles them, '^more clearly than any other tales 
in the book, bear the marks of popular origin, and doubtless 
had been repeated by generations of Israelite story-tellers be- 
fore they were first written do^\Ti" (p. 82). They doubtless 
had been repeated in every Jewish household until the time 
that the hypothetical J is supposed to have lived ; and the best 
way to account for this is that they were written in the Book 
of Judges so that they could not. be forgotten. They have been 
repeated in every Jewish and every Christian household, to 
the great delight of the small boy, down to the present day, 
and they will be until the end of time ; and they are so repeated 
just because they are in a book which is supposed to be truth- 
ful. But the question still remains, How did the story-tellers 
who first began to tell these stories in ancient Israel know 
anything about the Xaririte vow, so as to put both Samson 
and his mother under its restrictions ? If there is any other 
answer than that thers' knew it because it had been given by 
Moses and written in the Book of Xumbers, none such worthy 



232 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

of a momeoit's consideration has yet been discovered by our 
erudite and industrious critics.^^ If they have not found it 
yet, when will they? And until they do, all the discredit 
which they can cast upon the story will never rob it of its 
proof that the law of the E'azirite was given by Moses, and 
that the book in which it is written was from his pen. (See 
Valpey French, Lex Mosaica, 157-t60.) 

3. Peace-offerings. After the second battle of the other 
tribes against the tribe of Benjamin, the former offered burnt 
offerings and peace-offerings (xx. 26), and they did the same 
after the last battle (xxi. 4). This was while Phinehas, the 
grandson of Aaron, was still alive (xx. 27), and consequently 
many persons were still alive who had lived with Moses. I^ow, 
the burnt offering is the only one in which the whole flesh 
of the animal was burned on the altar, while the peace-offering 
is the one of which none of the flesh was burned. The 
former had been known since the days of Cain and Abel ; but 
the latter was a creation of the law of Moses. It is first men- 
tioned and partly defined in the Book of Exodus (xxix. 28) ; 
it is more fully defined in Leviticus (iii. and vii.) ; and in 
Deuteronomy an addition is made to the portion given the 
priest. The flesh was partly eaten by the offerer and his 
friends, and partly by the officiating priest, while only the 
fat, the kidneys and the gall were offered to God on the altar. 
If the people of Israel actually offered peace-offerings on the 
two occasions just mentioned, then the law of Moses had 
already been given, and many who participated on these occa- 
sions had personal remembrance of the fact. 

The only way to evade the force of this evidence is the 

^"Kuenen says: "The Nazarite vow is regulated by law in the 
Pentateuch. But the practice itself is much older than this law, espe- 
cially the Nazariteship for life, of which we have the first example in 
Samuel" (Rel. of Israel, I. 316). The first of these assertions can be 
made only by assuming that the law was given later than the time 
of Samuel; the second, only by denying the account of Samsou; and 
in all there is a failure to account for the origin of the vow. A his- 
tory of the religion of Israel which fails to account for this remark- 
able feature of it shows by the very fact that it is not derived from 
authentic sources. The real sources it rejects. 



^HE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 23S 

one which is the constant resort of the critics ; that is, to deny 
the facts in the case^ The account in Judges is ascribed to 
"the post-exilic editor or author." As this imaginary person- 
age lived after the Babylonian exile, he had no means of know- 
ing what occurred in the time of the Judges, and consequently 
he made up his stories out of unfounded oral traditions. Thus 
again "historical criticism" makes out its case by the denial 
of history. Prof. G. F. Moore, in the International Critical 
Commentary on Judges, says, ^'^In the whole description of 
the war there is hardly a semblance of reality" (p. 405), and 
again, "It is not history; it is not legemd, but the theocratic 
ideal of a scribe who had never handled a more dangerous 
weapon than an imaginative pen" (431).^-'- 

4. Micah's Levite Priest. We read in the seveaiteenth 
chapter of Judges that there was a man in the hill country 
of Ephraim whose name was Micah. Micah was a thief. He 
stole eleven hundred pieces of silver from his mother. If they 
were shekels, the whole amount was about $600. The old 
woman, no better than she ought to be, pronounced a curse 
on the thief; and after this Micah acknowledged that he had 
the money. He seems to have been so scared by the curse that 
he made confession and restored the stolen property. Then the 
old woman dedicated two hundred of the pieces to be 'made into 
two silver images to be worshiped as gods. The thief, with 

" For the purpose of discrediting the account of this war, Driver 
asserts: "The figures are incredibly large: Deborah (v. 8) places the 
ftumber of warriors in entire Israel at not more than 40,000" {Int., 
168). He is aiming to follow Wellhausen, but he runs ahead of him; 
for Wellhausen puts it this way: "The Israelites were strangely help- 
less; it was as if neither shield nor spear could be found among their 
40,000 fighting men." But both of these scholars inexcusably pervert 
the meaning of Deborah's remark. She does not say or intimate that 
Israel had only 40,000 fighting men; but she simply raises the ques- 
tion whether there was a shield or spear among 40,000 in Israel. Her 
words are: 

"They chose new gods: 

Then was war in the gates: 

Was there a shield or a spear seen 

Among forty thousand in Israel?" 

One shield or spear to every 40,000 is her obvious meaning, and 
she has no thought of giving the whole number of warriors. 



234 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

an inconsistency that is not without its parallel even in some 
so-called Christian lands, built a house for his gods, added 
some teraphim, or wooden image®, consecrated one of his sons 
as a priest, and made him an ephod after the style of a high 
prieet. The author of Judges apologizes for the toleration of 
such thievery and idolatry, by adding the remark that "there 
was no king in Israel in those days: every man did that which 
was right in his own eyes/' Perhaps, if there had been a king, 
Micah would not have been punished for stealing from his 
own mother, and if the king had been such as Jeroboam, who 
set up the golden calf at Bethel, the sin of idola,try would have 
been overlooked. The greatest folly in the whole a,ffair is that 
it was Jehovah, who had forbidden the use of images, whom the 
thief was proposing to worship. But in this he was no greater 
fool than Jeroboam and all of his successors on the throne. 

In the course of time a yo>ung Levite visited Micah's house. 
He was a descendant of Moses (xviii. 30) ; but he was a tramp; 
for when Micah asked him whence he came, he answered, ''I 
am a Levite of Bethlehem- judah, and I go to soijoum where 
I may find a place.'' Micah offers him the very place' he was 
hunting for, by saying, "Dwell with me, and be unto me a 
father and a priest, and I will give thee ten pieces of silver, 
by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals." Like 
a fool and the lazy vagrant that he was, the Levite accepted 
the offer; and then Micah, like another fool, said, "Now I 
know that Jehovah will do me good, seeing I have a Levite for 
my priest." The Levite afterward turned out to be a greater 
rascal than. Micah ; for at the request of six hundred unscrupu- 
lous Danites who passed that way, he pretended to give au. 
answer from Jehovah as to the success of the marauding expe- 
dition on which they had embarked, and then, at their sugges- 
tion, he stole his master's gods and went away te be a priest 
for this new set of outlaws. 

This story is told by the author of Judges for the evident 
purpose of showing the recklessness and daring of some hypo- 
crites in those lawless days; but it is valuable in showing the 
pre-existence of the very law which Micah, the Levite and the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 235 

Danites were all tirampling under their feet. How could 
Micah have known anything about the ephod, except from 
the Levitical law in which this robe of the priest is de- 
scribed ? And ho^v could he have thought that a Levite, 
renegade as he was, could be more acceptable to Jehovah as a 
priest than his o^vn son, except by having learned from the 
same law that the Levites were next in official rank to the 
real priests, the sons of Aaron? These questions can not be 
answ^ered by our modern scientific critics w^ithout again deny- 
ing the facts of history. Driver, it is true, does not go this 
far; he says that "chapters xvii. and xviii. introduce to us an 
archaic state of Israelitish life;" but whether the account is 
true or not, he does not affirm. He also most strangely says 
that no "disapproval of what Micah had instituted appears to 
be entertained" {Int., 168) — as if an author, in giving an 
account of a transaction involving theft, idolatry and treach- 
ery, must be careful to express his disapproval of such rascality 
to free himself from the suspicion of approving it. Professor 
Moore {Com, on Judges, in loco) cites the name of a long list 
of rationalistic critics who hold that the ephod made of gold 
by Gideon (Judg. viii. 27) was an image, with the apparent 
purpose of intimating, though he does not affirm it, that 
Micah's was also an image; but the absurdity of this is suffi- 
ciently apparent from the fact that both Samuel in his child- 
hood, and David, when dancing before the ark, ivore ephods 
(I. Sam. ii. 18; II. Sam. vi. 14) and from the fact that 
throughout the whole of the Old Testament the w^ord elsewhere 
means a priestly garments True, Gideon's was made of the 
gold presented to him out of the spoil of the Midianites; but 
it was just as easy to make a garment by weaving threads of 
gold, as to make an image of gold by melting and molding it; 
and the former w^ould require less of the precious metal in 
proportion to the size of the article made. It was as easy, too, 
to worship the garment as the image. This is but a blind and 
staggering effort to get rid of the fact that the Levitical law% 
which prescribed the ephod as the distingaiishing garment of 



236 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

the high priest was already in existence and well known in the 
days of Micah. 

As to the Levito, Professor Bennett., in Polychrome Judges 
{in loco), echoes the voice of many critics when he says: 

Levite must here denote his calling, not his extraction; he was a 
professional priest, though of the clan of Judah, just as the Ephraimite 
Samuel was brought up as a priest at Shiloh. The relation of the 
Levite priests to the old tribe of Levi is obscure. 

It must be; and why? E'o reason is given, but the reial 
onei is on the surface. The word "Levite" must mean the 
man's profession; for if it 'means that he belonged to the 
tribe of Levi, then the critical theory about the Levites and 
their appointed service breaks down. And how profoiund the 
remark that "the relation of the Levite priests to the old tribe 
of Levi is obscure' ' ! Why not say the same about the relation 
of the Benjamites to the old tribe of Benjamin, of the 
Ephraimites to the old tribe of Ephraim ? Does it not appear 
as if these scholars bade farewell to candor when they embarked 
upon the sea of critical conjecture and discovery? 

§7. Iis" THE Books of Samuel. 

In answering the charge of Eobertson Smith that the ritual 
observed at Shiloh proves the non-existence at the time of the 
Levitical ritual, we have already exhibited much of its bear- 
ing in the opposite direction; we now consider its bearing in 
this direction more fully. While it is unquestionable, as we 
have seen before, that under the management of Hophni and 
Phinehas both the moiral law and the ritual law were very 
grossly violated, we find, upon careful examination of the 
facts, indubitable evidences that the latter was the law under 
which they lived. We specify: 

1. The Structure in and before Which this Service was 
Conducted. It is styled "the house of Jehovah" (i. 7 ; ii. 15, 
24) ; the "temple of Jehovah" (i. 9; iii. 3) ; and "the tent of 
meeting" (ii. 22). The last is the current title of the struc- 
ture othermse called the tabernaclei, in the book of Moses. 
The first, "house of Jehovah," is first used in Ex. xxiii. 19, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 237 

before the structure was erected according to Exodus. It is 
found in the command, 'The first of the firstfruits of thy 
ground thou shalt bring into the house of Jehovah thy God." 
As no fruits of the ground weire gathered during the wilder- 
ness wanderings, this precept, of course, had reference to the 
future, and to whatever structure might be known as the house 
of God when fruits of the ground should be. produced. Until 
four hundred and eighty years after the Exodus, that is, until 
Solomon's temple was built, the house of Jehovah to which 
these firstfruits were brought was none other than the tent 
of meeting. The same precept is repeated verbatim in Ex. 
xxxiv. 26, after Moses had received directions about the con- 
struction of the tent of meeting. Then Moses knew what the 
"house of Jehovah" was to be, and necessarily understood it 
to be the house to which the firstfruits must be brought. Later 
still, and after the tent of meeting had been in existence and 
use for nearly forty years, Moses said: "Thou shalt not bring 
the hire of a whore, or the wages of a dog, into the house of 
Jehovah thy God for any vow." Erom these three passages, 
if they speak the truth, it is placed beyond dooibt that the tent 
of meeting built by Moses was known to him by the title, "house 
of Jehovah." This title it bears in I. Samuel. The title, 
"temple of God," is therefore the only new one here found, 
and the nature of the term is such that it may be applied 
properly to any structure in which God is habitually worshiped. 
The structure, then, in which Hophni and Phinehas served is 
identified by its names with the one which Moses built, and 
which Joshua first set up at Shiloh, where our text finds it. 
It had remained here for more than three hundred years, with 
the probable exception of a temporary removal to Bethel in the 
days of Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron (Judg. xx. 26-28). 
2. The Contents of the Structure. There is no formal 
description of the tent of meeting, or its contents, in our text, 
and consequently all that we learn about it is from allusions 
of the most incidental character. This prevents fullness of 
information, and at the same time it is a guarantee against 



238 THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

the suspicioiL of any false or 'misleading representation by the 
writer. In mentioning the time and the place of God's call 
to the child Samuel, it is said that '^the lamp of God was not 
yet gone out," and that Samuel slept "in the temple of Jehovah 
where the ark of God was." We thus learn that a lamp, which 
is called ''the lamp of God," was kept there burning at least 
a part of the night; and this can be no other than the golden 
lamp incorrectly styled a candlestick in the Book of Exodus. 
The law required that it be kept burning all the night; but 
it is not surprising that under the lawless administration of 
Hophni and Phinehas, this requirement was neglected. The 
ark of God is identified with the one made by Moses, not 
only by its name, but by the circumstance that in describing 
its removal to the field of battle by these two wicked priests, 
the author says, "The people sent to Shiloh, and brought from 
thence the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of hosts, who sitteith 
between the cherubim" — the last clause having reference to 
the two golden cherubim that stood, one on each end of the 
mercy-seat, and overshadowed it with their wings. God had 
promised, "I will meet with thee, and commune with thee 
from above the mercy-seat., from between the two cherubim 
which are upon the ark of the testimony" (Ex. xxv. 22). 

The table of shewbread was also in this temple; for after 
its removal from Shiloh to I^ob in the reign of Saul, David, 
in his flight from Saul, called on the priest Ahimelech for 
bread, and the latter gave him "holy bread; for there was no 
bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before 
Jehovah, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away" 
(xxi. 3-6). Jesus afterward noted the fact that this act was 
unlawful, the law providing that this bread should be e^aten 
by the priests alone; but still it shows that the bread was kept 
there as the law required, and was renewed by hot bread at 
pro'per intervals. 

We now see that three out of the four sacred vessels which, 
according to the Levitical law, were to be kept in the taber- 
nacle, were kept in the house at Shiloh, and it is fair to pre- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 239 

sume that the only reason why the fourth, the altar of incense, 
is not mentioned, is, that in the accounts of the priests and 
visitors to the structure at this period, there was no occasion 
for alluding to it. We may assert, then, with confidence, that 
while in some respects the law of Moses, if in existence, was 
seriously violated by the priests then in charge, the tent of 
meeting erected by Moses for the purpose of putting the Leviti- 
cal ritual into effect, together with all of the sacred furniture 
provided for various acts of that ritual, was standing at Shiloh 
in the days of Samuel. But how could this have been if the 
law w^hich originated, this service had not been enacted before 
this time ? Let us see what answer the critics give to this 
question. We have seen a part of their answer in a preceding 
section (p. 144), and have found that it consists in irrelevant 
assertions and unfounded assumptions. We now seek their 
final and decisive answ^er. 

3. The Existence of tbe Tabernacle Denied. In the first 
place, they deny that the tabernacle so elaborately described 
in the Book of Exodus, and so often mentioned in later hisr 
tory, ever had a real existence. Wellhausen says: 

The tabernacle rests on a historical fiction. . . . Hebrew tradition, 
even from the time of the judges and the first kings, for which the 
Mosaic tabernacle was, strictly speaking, intended, knows nothing at 
all about it (Prol., 39). 

Robertson Smith says of it: 

It is, in short, not a fact, but an idea, an imaginary picture of 
such a tabernacle as might serve as a pattern for the service of the 
second temple (0. T., 410). 

Andrew Harper, more modest, takes the same ground when 
he says : 

There is not a hint in the legislation of Deuteronomy that its 
author knew of the tabernacle and its sole right as a place of sacrifice. 
From the beginning to the end of the code he never mentions the 
tabernacle or the sacrifices there (258). 

Such is the dictum of the critics, from the most radical to 
the most conservative. After this sweeping denial, it is an 
easy step to declare, as they do, that I. Sam. ii. 22, in which 
the structure at Shiloh is called "the tent of meeting/* is an 



240 TBE AVTB0R8HIP OF 

interpolation (Prol, 41, 43; Encyc, Brit, article, "Taber- 
nacle"). There ig not the slightest suspicion of this verse 
on grounds of textual criticism, but it stands as an insuperable 
barrier against the dictum that there never was a tabernacle, 
and, therefore, it must be erased from the text. 

I can not do better with reference toi this wholesale slash- 
ing of the Scripture records, than to quote what Mr. W. L. 
Baxter says of it in his "Reply to WelLhausen" : 

Wellhausen's treatment of this branch of the subject is so astound- 
ing, in its utterly unsupported assumptions, and in its wholesale impu- 
tations of falsehood to the writers of Scripture, that we always feel a 
difficulty in realizing that he can expect his views to be soberly 
accepted by any Bible student. Nothing in the whole of the Old Testa- 
ment is more indubitably, more minutely and more solemnly asserted 
and described than the erection of the Mosaic tabernacle. Next to the 
delivery of the Decalogue, it is the main outstanding event in Israel's 
first year of a national emancipation. No less than thirteen entire 
chapters (Ex. xxv.-xxxi. and xxxv.-xl.) are devoted lo a most circum- 
stantial account of its contrivance and execution. Its precious metals, 
its cunning workers, its hearty contributors, its every division and 
curtain and vessel, its time in making, and its splendid inauguration, 
are all there most explicitly detailed. ... If anything seems imbedded 
immovably in the history of Jewish worship, it is the giving of the 
divine pattern for the sanctuary, and the elaborate execution thereof 
in the wilderness "as the Lord commanded Moses" (22). 

The enormity of such dealings with sacred records is not 
at all alleviated when we come to consider the excuses which 
some who feel the need of an excuse, have given for it. 
Robertson Smith, foT example, mentions the "gold and silver, 
the rich hangings of rare purple, the incense and unguents of 
costly spices," and demands: 

Ho'w came these things to be found in the wilderness? It is 
absurd to say, as is commonly said, that the tabernacle was furnished 
from the spoil of the Egyptians (Ex. xi. 2; xii. 35), and that the serfs 
who left Egypt carrying on their shoulders a wretched provision of 
dough tied up in their cloaks (Ex. xii. 34), were at the same time 
laden with all the wealth of Asia and Africa, including such strange 
furniture for a long journey on foot as store of purple yam and the 
like (0. T., 410). 

Here he accepts a part of the text of Exodus only to mis- 
represent it, and utterly ignores another part of which he could 
not have been ignorant. The text does not say that they left 
Egypt "carrying on their shoulders a wretched provision of 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 241 

dough." They would have been fools indeed to start on a 
desert journey of two hundred miles, by the most direct course, 
mth no better supply of food. They actually supplied them- 
selves, before getting entirely out oi Egypt, with food sufficient 
to last them a whole month; for they star.ied on the fifteenth 
of the first m.nth (xii. 3, 18) and it was on the fifteenth day 
of the second month that they ran out of bread (xvi. 1-3). The 
dough with which they started was intended only for the starts 
and the statement of xii. 39, that "they could not tarry, neither 
had they prepared for themselves any victuals," has reference 
only to the departure from their homes for the rendezvous at 
Rameses. On the other hand, the positive statements that 
"according to the word of Moses" they "asked of the Egyptians 
jewels of gold and raiment," that "the Egyptians let them have 
what they asked," and that "they spoiled the Egyptians," are 
just as credible as the statement that they took unleavened 
dough on their shoulders bound up with their clothing. And 
while they were asking what they would of the Egyptians, 
they unquestionably gathered up a month's supply of provi- 
sions, thinking that they would make their journey to Canaan 
before it would be exhausted. It was because they were led 
by an unexpected route that their supply was exhausted in the 
mlderness. As to the quantity of gold and jewels with which 
they supplied themselves, if every man and woman secured 
a single dollar's worth, the amount would have been about 
$1,200,000. As to purple yarns, and costly goods for wearing 
apparel, the women of Israel, unless they differed very much 
from modern women, were more eager for these than for gold 
and silver; and especially so from the fact that Egypt was 
richly supplied with articles of this kind which money could 
not buy in any other land. To give Smith's reason, then, for 
denying that the tabernacle was built in the wilderness, is 
worse than to deny that it was, and give no reason. 

For the assertion quoted above, that the passage (I. Sam. 
ii. 22) in which the "tent of meeting" is named, is an inter- 
polation, there is no evidence whatever, and it is clear that 



242 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tlie assertion is made to get rid of evidence against the theory. 
But even if this assertion could be maintained, there would 
still remain unchallenged the passages in which it is perfectly 
manifest, as we have said above, that the structure before which 
Hophni and Phinehas officiated, and which is called elsewhere 
the temple of Jehovah, and the house of Jehovah, stood at 
Shiloh, and that it is identified with the structure that Moses 
is said to have built in the wilderness, by the fact that it con- 
tained the same sacred vessels, the ark, the golden lamp, and 
the table of shewbread. All the evasions and bold denials of 
the critics on this subject fail as completely tO' rid them of 
the binding force of evidence against their theory as did the 
writings of the fabled Laocoon to rid him and his sons of the 
entwining serpents. 

4. The Kitual at the House in Shiloh. In a former section 
(p. 7) we have already discussed this topic in answer to the 
objections of the adverse critics; we now consider the positive 
evidence which it furnishes for the pre-exi&tence. of the law. 
We find here, as respects the interior of the house, that accord- 
ing to the law there was a regular trimming and lighting of 
the lamp, and the renewing of the shewbread, as seen in the 
preceding section. We find also an altar for sacrifices, and 
at least three priests — a high priest and two common priests — 
who officiate at this altar. While the latter have been so cor- 
rupt in their practices as to disgust the mass of the people, 
and cause them to "abhor the offering of Jehovah,'^ we find 
one faithful Israelite still coming annually with his family 
to offer, and his sacrifice is the peace-offering which in its 
peculiar features is a creation of the Levitical law. We find 
the extortionate priests demanding of the offerers a larger 
share of the victims than they are entitled to, thus implying 
that there was a prescribed portion allotted to them, yet they 
still burn on the altar the fat, which is the only part of the 
peace-offering that according to the Levitical law was to be 
burned. We find also that Hannah was acquainted with the 
l^aririte vow, to the restrictions of which she binds her unbo^m 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 243 

son, and witli the priestly ephod, in imitation of which she 
dresses her boy when she leaves him with the priest; and both 
of these are creations of the Leviticai law. 

Besides the argument of Robertson Smith which we have 
quoted and discussed in a former section (p. 144), one more 
is advanced for the purpose of setting this evidence aside; 

The arrangements agree with those of the second temple in various 
particulars in which Solomon's temple was different; e. g., there is one 
golden candlestick, and not ten (0. T., 410; note 1). 

But all the descriptions of the tabea'nacle which we have 
in the Scriptures, represent it as having but one; so if this 
is the tabernacle built by Moses, it must have but one; and 
if the account of it is imaginar}^ it should still liave but one. 
Only in case the account was imaginary, and was taken from 
the pattern of Solomon's temple, could there have been ten. 
The second temple copied in this respect tlie original taber- 
nacle, and not the temple of Solomon. This, perhaps, was not 
because Zerubbabel and his co-laborers had any objection to the 
ten lamps used by Solomon, but because they brought with 
them from Babylon only the one which had been made in the 
wilderness and kept in both the tabernacle and the temple. 
The other nine may have been left in the heathen temple at 
Babylon because the Jews were content with the one which 
Moses made and would not ask Cyrus for the others. Some 
new critic much arise, and make an advance on his predeces- 
sors, before the efforts of the latter shall be able to shake the 
evidence for the Mosaic law and the Mosaic tabernacle, which 
is furnished by the tent of meeting at Shiloh, and the service 
which was so imperfectly rendered there by the sons of Eli. 

There are some other evidences for the Mosaic origin of the 
law to be found in the Books of Samuel, less conclusive than 
those which we have presented. The reader who desires to 
exhaust the subject will do Avell to study the essay in Lex 
Mosaica by J. J. Lias, under the heading, "The Times of Sam- 
uel and Saul." All of the essays in that work are worthy of 
most careful study. 



244 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

§8. In I. AND II. Kings. 

1. Solomon's Temple, The temple erected by Solomon was 
expressly intended to take tlie place of the movable tent of meeifc- 
ing, or tabernacle, which had previously been the center of 
Israel's worship. This is made clear by considering in con- 
nection what was said on the subject to David, and what was 
said by Solomon when he was about to build, \\nien David 
wais dwelling in his own house, and God had given him rest 
from all his enemies round about, he conceived the thought of 
building a temple, and said to the prophet Nathan, ^^See. now, 
I dwell in a housei of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within 
curtains." !N'athan, understanding his meaning, answered, "Go, 
do all that is in thy heart ; for Jehovah is with thee." !N"athan 
went his way, but returned the same night with a message from 
God, in which, among other things, he said : "I have not dwelt 
in a house since I brought up the children of Israel out of 
Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a 
tabernacle. . . . When tby days be fulfilled, and thou shalt 
sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee;, which 
shall proceed out of thy bowala, and I will establish thy king- 
dom. He shall build a house for my namei, and I will establish 
the throne of his kingdom, forever" (II. Sam. vii. 1-13). 
When Solomon was preparing to commence the building, he 
said in a message to Hiram of Tyre: "Thou knowest how that 
David my father could not build a house for the name of Jeho- 
vah his God for the wars which were about him on every side>, 
until Jehovah put them under the soles of his feet. But now 
Jehovah my God hath given me rest on every side; there is 
neither adversary, nor evil occurrent. And, behold, I purpose 
to build a house for the name of Jehovah my God, as Jehovah 
spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set 
upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build the house for my 
name" (I. Kings v. 3-5). This shows that there was a per- 
fect understanding on the part of David, the prophet IN'athan, 
and Solomon, that this house was to supersede the movable 
tabernacle as the house for Jehovah's name. This understand- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 245 

ing is further emphasized by the fact that as soon as the temple 
was completed, and in the process of dedication, "the ark of 
Jehovah, and the t-ent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that 
were in the tent,'' were brought up into the temple, and the 
brazen altar was placed in front of the temple, as it had stood 
in front of the tabernacle (I. Kings viii. 1-4, 64). This was 
the end of a service which had continued for 480 years (vi. 1). 

That which thus appears from formal statements, is made 
equally clear from a consideration of the dimensions, the form 
and the contents of the temple, all of which were modeled after 
those of the tabernacle. Its length and width were just double 
those of the tabernacle, and its height, thirty cubits, was just 
double that of the tabernacle if the latter is measured, not to 
the top of its walls, but to its extreme height, the top of its 
ridge pole. (See Mr. Ferguson's draught of the tabernacle 
in Smith's Bible Dictionary.) The interior was divided into 
two apartments, as was the tabernacle, the holy and the most 
holy — the latter accessible only through the former. The 
inner face of the walls of both was covered with gold. The 
oracle in each was occupied by the ark of the covenant, and the 
holy place by an altar of incense, a golden lamp, and a golden 
table for the shewbread. 

In front stood the altar of burnt offerings, and the great 
brazen vessel called the sea occupied the place of the laver 
between the altar and the door of the temple. The only mate- 
rial differences in all these particulars were such as grew out 
of the greater magnificence of the temple and its intended 
greater durability. For the latter purpose its walls were of 
stone instead of wood, and both of its apartments were closed 
with wooden doors covered with gold, in place of embroidered 
curtains. For greater magnificence, it was supplied with ten 
golden lamps instead of one, a table and an incense altar of 
solid gold, and, in the oracle, gilded cherubim of gigantic pro- 
portions overshadowing the two much smaller which overshad- 
owed the mercy-seat. ISTo man can fail to see the intended 
modeling of the one structure after the other. The destructive 
critics see it as plainly as others do; but in order to save their 



246 "THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

theory, they have fallen into the absurd assumption, as we have 
stated before, that the tabernacle never had an existence, but 
that the many chapters in Exodus describing it were spun out 
of the imagination of some priests living in the days of Ezra, 
making of it a work of the imagination as idle and useless as 
the tales of the Arabian Nights, and as dry reading as any book 
on skulls and bonesi. 

2. The Service at the Temple. As the temple and its cou' 
tents presuppo'se thei tabernacle after which it was modeled, 
80 the service rendered to God in and before the temple pre- 
supposes the existence of the Levitical law for the execution of 
which it was evidently intended. Why was the ark, with its 
mercy-seat and the overshadowing cherubim, placed in the 
oracle but for the very purpose declared in the Levitical law, 
that it might symbolize the presence of God among his people? 
^(Ex. XXV. 22). Why the table in the holy place, except to keep 
thereon the twelve loaves of bread, to be changed on every sab- 
bath as required by the same law? (xxv. 30). Why the lamp^ 
stands, except to keep a Siymbolic light shining in the temple as 
the Levitical law required? (xxv. 37; xxvii. 20; xxx. 7, 8). 
And why the altar of incense, except that the burning of incense 
morning and evening, which is prescribed as a part of the duty 
of the priests, may be done becomingly? (xxx. 7-9). Why the 
vessel of water called the sea immediately in front of the tem- 
ple, but for the washing of the hands and feet, of the priests, 
ere they approach the altar or enter the holy place, as com- 
manded in the law? (Ex. xxx. 17-21). A post-office building 
of the present day, with its money-order department, its reg- 
istered-letter department, its boxes for receiving and delivering 
mail, its distributing clerks, its mail-pouches, its stamps and 
its envelopes, no more presupposes the postal laws of the Amer- 
ican Government, than Solomon's temple presupposes the old 
tabernacle and the Levitical legislation. Without these it 
would be as complete an enigma as the great Sphinx, or the 
Labyrinth of ancient Egypt. It would be a monument to Solo- 
mon's folly and extravagance, instead of a token of divine love 
and favor to God's chosen people. 



fHE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, Ul 

3. The Exclusiveness of the Temple Service. We have 
said in a former section that during the reign of Solomon, 
after the erection of the temple, theire is no trace of Jehovah 
worship at any other place. The ^^high places" are not once 
mentioned except in connection with the heathen altars erected 
by Solomon in his old age for his heathen wives (xi. 7). 
It can not, then, be denied that during this period the 
restriction of worship to one sanctuary, which is empha- 
sized in the Book of Deuteronomy, was practically in force, 
and that it met with undisputed acceptance by the peo- 
ple. This proves what all of our critics deny, that the 
Deuteronomic law was already known, and that its observ- 
ance was practically universal. Proof of tlie same is found 
in the fact that as soon as Jeroboam was settled on the 
throne of the ten secedin/^ tribes, he issued a decree forbidding 
his subjects to go to Jerusalem, to worship. He recognized the 
unitizing effect of worshiping at a single sanctuaiy, and feared 
that a continuance of that powerful influence would lead to a 
reunion of Israel and his own dethronement and death. For 
tliis reason he established two sanctuaries in his own dominion, 
and made tliis worship distinct by the use of a golden calf as 
a symbol of Jehovah. He also, at the same time, and for the 
same purpose, appointed an annual festival in imitation of the 
feast of tabernacles, but to be celebrated one month later (xii. 
26-29). If it had been thought at this time that worship at 
any high place which any man might select would be accept- 
able to Jehovah, the king could have had no reason for restrict- 
ing the worship to these two sanctuaries. It was not until the 
minds of the people were further corrupted that they began to 
set up altars "on every high hill and under every green tree." 

Having established these two places for sacrifice, Jeroboam 
must needs have a priesthood to conduct the service at them, 
and it is said, to his further reproach, that "he made priests 
from among the people who w^ere not of the sons of Levi" (xii. 
51). This points out a second departure from the Levitical 
law, and shows that the priesthood hitherto recognized was the 
one authorized by that law. For the accommodation of these 



24S THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

illegitimate priests he built houses at the two sanctuaries which 
are called "houses of the high places" {ih.). 

When Jeroboam was about to bum incense on his altar at 
Bethel, for the first time apparently, a man of God from Judah 
drew near and denounced the altar in words which still further 
demonstrate the previous existence of the Levitical law. He 
said: "A child shall be born in the house o<f David, Josiah by 
name; and upon thee shall he sacrifice the priests of the high 
places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall they 
burn upon thee" (xii. 33; xiii. 2). How could it have been 
known at this time that burning men's bones on an altar would 
defile it, except by the provision of the Levitical law that touch- 
ing a bone of a dead (man was defiling? (!N'um. xix. 16). 

4. The Toleration of the High Places. The kings of 
Judah, from Jeroboam to Hezekiah, are censured by the author 
of the Book of Kings for not taking away the high places. How 
could this censure be justly administered if no law had yet been 
given restricting the sacrifice to a single altar, and that altar 
the one in Jerusalem? The answe<r of our critics is, that the 
author of Kings lived after the discovery of Deuteronomy, and 
that in his zeal for the eniorcement of the Deuteronomic law 
he threw back his own sentiments into the preceding history. 
But if he did this, his censure was manifestly unjust, seeing 
that no man can be rightly censured fo'r not obeying a law 
not yet in existence. It was not only unjust^ but it was men- 
dacious ; for if the Book of Deuteronomy had the origin which 
critics ascribe, to it, this author knew the fact, and he was mak- 
ing false pretenses when he assumed by these censures that it 
had existed earlier. Thus again and a^ain the positions and 
arguments of these critics bring the authors of the Biblical 
books into the reproach of being guilty of fraud upon fraud. 
'Not many men will or can believe this; and to avoid believing 
it they must cast aside the critical theories as both false and 
libelous. 

It should be observed here, as Stanley Leathes argues in 
Lex Mosaica (437), that the condemnation of high places in 
Kings was derived from their condemnation by name in Lev. 



# 



■^-N. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 249 

xxvi. 30, and not from what is said in Deuteronomy, seeing that 
in the latter book they are not mentioned. But if the author 
had both of these books, he had two reasons for censuring the 
kings who tolerated them; first, that they were condemned by 
name in the former book, and condemned in the latter because 
they were places of worship apart from the central sanctuary. 
But if, as the critics affirm, the Book of Leviticus had not beeai 
written when the Book of Kings was, he could not have been 
influenced at all by the latter, and, as we have seen above, he 
could not, on the critical hypothesis, have been honestly influ- 
enced by Deuteroaiomy. But he must have been influenced by 
one or both of these books; and if either was of earlier date 
than the reigns of Judah^s kings, both were, and both must have 
come, as they claim to have come, from Moses. 

5. Hezekiah's Attack on the High Places. Hezekiah was 
the first king of Judah, according to the Book of Kings, to 
make an earnest effort to break up the worship on high places. 
It is said of him: "He did that which was right in the eyes 
of Jehovah, according to all that David his father had donei. 
He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut 
down the Asherah: and he brake in pieces the brazen serpent 
that Moses had made ; for unto those days the children of Israel 
did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan. He 
trusted in Jehovah, the God of Israel; so that after him there 
was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among 
them that were before him. For he clave to Jehovah, he 
departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, 
which Jehovah com'manded Moses" (xviii. 3-6). Here, among 
the things which made Hezekiah the best of kings, it is said 
that he removed the high places. He did this, and all the other 
good acts of his reign, because he "trusted in Jehovah," and 
"kept his commandments which he commanded Moses." If 
this is true, there was some command of God by Moses which 
condemned the high places as well as the "pillars," the Asherah, 
and the burning of incense to the brazen serpent But what 
commandment condemned the high places? As we have said 
above, there are only two : the one in Deuteronomy which 



250 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

restricted all sacrifice to the central sanctuary, and the one, a 
threat, rather than a cottnmandment, in Ler^iticus., in which God, 
speaking O'f the punishment which he will bring upon Israel in 
case of apostasy, says: ''I will destroy your high placets, and 
cut down your sun-images" (xxvi. 30). As sure, tlien, as this 
statement of the author of Kings is true^ one or both of these 
commands were already known tO' Israel and the critical theory 
of their late origin is falsified. 

There is further evidence that Hezekiah was moved by the 
law of Deuteronomy in suppressing the high places, found in 
the argument of Rabshakeh when urging the surrender of Jeru- 
salem to Sennacherib : "If ye say to me. We trust in Jehovah 
our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars 
Hezekiah hatli taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jeru- 
salem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem ?" (xviii. 
22). He knew that Hezekiah had taken away the high places 
and altars, for the purpose of limiting the worship to Jeru- 
salem, and, supposing from his heathen education that this 
would displease Jehovah, he argued the folly of trusting to him 
for deliverance. That Rabshakeh was well informed as to the 
facts in the case there can be no doubt ; for the invading army 
had then been in the land long enough to have taken all the 
cities of Judah except Jerusalem, and he had conversed witli 
Jewish captives in abundance concerning the affairs of Judah. 
His only mistake was in supposing that the altars destroyed 
were legitimate places of worship, and that Jehovah must there- 
fore be displeased with their destruction. 

The effort made by the destructive critics to evade the force 
of this evidence is vigorously set forth by Mr. Baxter in the 
following lines: 

In this case, Wellhausen invents a forger in the time of the exile, 
and then lays on his innocent shoulders all the statements in the Books 
of Kings that threaten his discovery with death. He calmly assures us 
that it is only "the Exilian redaction of the Books of Kings, which 
reckons the cultus outside Jerusalem as heretical" (p. 15). Who this 
infamous redactor was, what may have been his name or his residence 
or his surroundings or his experiences, must remain utterly unknown: 
Wellhausen simply and absolutely summons that unblushing man up 
from the vasty deep of his own imagination, and then makes him the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 251 

instrument of foisting a twenty-fold lie into the records of Scripture. 
. . . Has he a copy in Germany of the Books of Kings as they existed 
before the "Exilian redactor" operated on them? If so, he should pub- 
lish it {Sane, and Sac, 153 f.). 

Driver ignores Wellhausen's redactor, and ascribes to the 
compiler of the Books of Kings that which Wellhausen ascribes 
to the redactor. He says : 

Deuteronomy is the standard by which the compiler judges both 
men and actions; and the history, from the beginning of Solomon's 
reign, is presented not in purely objective form (as, e. g., in II. Sam. 
ix. 20), but from the point of view of the Deuteronomic code. . . . Obe- 
dience to the Deuteronomic law is the qualification for an approving 
verdict; deviation from it is the source of ill success and the sure pre- 
lude to condemnation {Int., 199). 

Doubtless this last sentence is true ; and it is true that Deu- 
teronomy is the standard by which mesn and actions are judged ; 
and why should it not be if it was written by Moses? But if 
it was not written by Moses, why should the compiler of Kings 
have made it his standard ? He could have done so only in the 
way which Driver describes, by presenting the history "not in 
a purely objective form ;" that is, not as actually histor}^, but 
as history distorted to suit "the point of vie\v of the Deute- 
ronomic code.'' In this lies the fraudulent purpose with which 
this historian, in common with the others, is directly or indi- 
rectly charged. Once more historical criticism denies history 
in order to make room for a theory. 

6. The Testimony Given to Joash. When Jehoiada the 
priest, who had saved the life of the infant Joash from Atha- 
liah, brought him forth in the temple to make him king, we 
are told that "he put the crown upon him, and gave him the 
testimony" (II. Kings xi. 12). The article here called "the 
testimony" can be no other than "the law of the kingdom," of 
which it is said in Deuteronomy: "It shall be, when he sitteth 
upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy 
of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests 
the Levites : and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein 
all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear Jehovah his 
God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to 
do them'' (xvii. 18, 19). As this law was to be copied "out of 



^5t THE AUTHORSHIP OP 

that which was before the priests," it did not, of course, con- 
tain all that was in that book ; and as it was to govern the king 
rather than the priests or the people, it included only such por- 
tions as related to the king's personal and official duties. It 
was not, therefore, a very long document. As Joash was too 
young, as yet, to order the making of this copy, or even to know 
that it had to be made, Jehoiada had prepared it in advancei, 
and gave it to him when the crown was placed on his head. In 
the margin of K. V. the clause is rendered, "put upon him the 
crown and the testimony;" and some critic has argued that as 
Joash was a child only six years old, a manuscript of the whole 
Pentate jch was too heavy a load for him to carry. "No serious 
man, of course, could present this as a serious argument, see- 
ing that the law to b© given to the king was one copied out 
from the whole law, and it may have been a small manuscript 
roll. It was certainly not too large for a seven-year-old boy to 
hold in his hand o-r on his arm. It was doubtless the same in 
content with the book written by Samuel when he anointed 
Saul : '^Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and 
wrote it in a book, and laid it up before Jehovah" (I. Sam. x. 
25). Here is proof, in the two instances combined, that this 
law of the kingdom, as it is now styled, which the critics say 
was composed in tJae reign of Manasseh and was suggested by 
the reign of Solomon, was actually complied with at the corona- 
tion of Joash more than two hundred years earlier, and that 
it was observed in the case of King Saul eighty years before 
the reign of Solomon. 

7, Sparing the Children of Murderers. The reign of Joash 
was ended by his assassination at the hands of two of his offi- 
cers (II. Kings xii. 20, 21). As soon as his son Amaziah was 
established on the throne, we are told that "he slew his serv- 
ants who had slain the king his father : but the children of the 
murderers he put not to death : according to that which is writ- 
ten in the book of the law of Moses, as Jehovah commanded, 
saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, 
nor the children be put to death for the fathers, but every man 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 253 

shall die for his own sins'' (xiv. 5, 6). Now, this law is found 
only in Deuteronomy (Deut. iv. 16) ; but this compliance with 
it occurred two centuries before the hypothetical date of this 
book. Moreover, the author of Kings, and, if he tells the truth, 
King Amaziah himself, recognized Deuteronomy as "the book 
of the law of Moses." 

Here we close our presentation of the evidence found in the 
Book of Kings for the early, and consequently the Mosaic, 
authorship of Deuteronomy ; for Ave have reached the period in 
which it is affirmed by the most radical critics that the book 
was in the hands of King Josiah. We have not aimed to 
exhaust the evidence; for much of the same character can be 
produced, and has been, from other passages ; but we have pre- 
sented that on which the controversy depends, and it seems abun- 
dantly sufficient to show that the principal actors in the histor- 
ical scenes which are portrayed in these books were distinctly 
cognizant of the existence of the law of Moses, both the Levit- 
ical and Deuteronomic law, and that it was without question 
ascribed by them to Moses. 

§10. The Books of the Eaely Prophets. 

1. Amos. The message with which the prophet Amos was 
charged, was a terrific denunciation of the immoralities then 
prevalent in Israel, Judah and the surrounding peoples. As 
we have seen in reviewing the arguments of the adverse critics, 
he also very severely denounced the sacrifices and offerings 
which Israel presented at the altars of Bethel, Gilgal, Dan and 
Beer-sheba, under the hypocritical pretense that these covered 
the multitude of the people's sins. But further than this it 
could hardly be expected that such a message would deal with 
questions of ritual. Yet the book is not without positive evi- 
dence that both the prophet, and the people of the ten tribes 
whom he addressed, were acquainted with the law of Moses 
which the latter were so grossly violating. 

(1) In the opening cry of the prophet, he exclaims: "Jeho- 
vah shall roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem'* 
(i. 2). This shows that Jerusalem was the recognized center of 



254 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Jehovah's presence and his worship. It was so in opposition 
to the centers for calf-worship which had been established in 
Israel; for, with direct reference to this cry, the prophet says 
in V. 4-6 : "For thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel, Seek 
ye me, and ye shall live: but seek not Beth-el, nor enter into 
Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go 
into captivity, and Beth-el shall come to nought. Seek ye 
Johovah, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the 
house of Joseph, and it devour and there be none to quench it' 
in Beth-el." Here it is made unmistakable that those who 
would seek Jehovah were to turn away from Beth-el, Gilgal 
and Beer-sheba, and find Jehovah in Jerusalem, whence his 
voice w^as roaring through the mouth of Amos. What plainer 
evidence could one wish that the Deuteronomic law was, con- 
trary to the voice of all destructive critics, already kno^vQ, and 
that Jerusalem was the only appointed place where Jehovah 
could be found to accept the sacrifices of his people' ? This was 
a century and a half before the date- assigned by these critics 
to Deuteronomy. 

(2) With one voice these critics insist that "the law'' in 
the lips of the early prophets never 'means the law of Moses, 
but the teaching (Hebrew, torah) of the prophets. Wellhausen 
says: 

By the law of Jehovah which the people of Judah have despised, 
it is impossible that Amos could have understood anything in the 
remotest degree resembling a ritual legislation {Prol., 56). 

The passage to which he here has allusion furnishes a com- 
plete test of the truth of this reckless assertion. It is this: 
"For three transgressions of Judah, yea, for four, I will not 
turn away the punishment thereof; because they have rejected 
the law of Jehovah, and have not kept his statutes, and their 
lies have caused them to err, after the which their fathers did 
walk'' (ii. 4). N'ow, Amos was himself the first of the writing 
prophets, and he was preceded only by Elijah and Elisha, who 
wrote no law, gave no statutes, and who spoke to Israel and not 
to Judah. Where, then, is the law of Jehovah which Judah had 
rejected, the statutes of Jehovah which they had not kept, and 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 255 

which their fathers had dealt with in the same way? They 
vanish into thin air with the theory which Avould thus falsify 
the meaning of words. The words of Amo« imply of necessity 
that there was a law of Jehovah, statutes of Jehovah, which had 
preceded the prophets, and which had be^n disreg^arded by the 
people of Judah for generations past. How completely blinded 
by a preconception must Wellhausen have been not to have seen 
that he was using this passage to teach the opposite of what it 
implies ! And how completely he has pulled the wool over the 
eyes of such men as Robertson Smith, Driver, Cheyne, and 
others, that they should not have seen the trap into which he 
has led them. But "critical views" have become traditional. 

(3) There are several allusions in Amos which show that 
he was acquainted with the strictly ritual or Levitical law as 
well as with that of Deuteronomy. He shows an acquaintance 
with the sixth chapter of lumbers by saying: "I raised up of 
your sons for prophets, and of your young men for ^azirites. 
. . . But ye gave the Nazirites wine to drink" (ii. 11, 12). 
The word "^azirite" is not found in any writing which these 
critics ascribe to a date earlier than Amos, except in the story 
of Samson (Judg. xiii. 5, 7; xvi. 17) ; and in this story there 
is not a hint that it was wrong for a Nazirite to drink wina 
Moreover, this story, according to the critics, was first written 
about the time of Amos by eT, and it could not have had the 
force of a law. But both Amos and the people of Israel knew 
full well that it was unlawful for a N^azirite to drink wine, or 
for another to give him wine to drink, and there is no source 
from which they could have obtained such information except 
this passage in lumbers. 

He shoAvs a knowledge of Lev. vii. 13, by saying of the 
worshipers of Bethel and Gilgal that they "offer [by burning, 
margin] a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened" 
(iv. 5). What could Amos or these worshipers have known 
about any connection of leavened bread with the thank-offering, 
had not the Levitical law already forbidden the burning of 
leaven upon the altar (Lev. ii. 11), but permitted the presen- 
tation of leavened bread with the thank-offering because it wag 



256 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

given to the priest and none of it was to be burned ? (Lev. vii. 
9, 10). The passage shows that with all their aberrations from 
the Levitical law, these worshipers wetre acquainted with it; 
for otherwise they could not be rebuked for this violation of 
it. Wellhausen seoks to evade the force of this ev»idence by 
asserting that the law forbidding the burning of leaven on the 
altar is in conflict with the earlier usage which permitted it. 
But what ha styles the "earlier usage/' the one here relied on 
by Amos, is the very one which condenms the offering of leaven 
by fire. The effort to evade the evidence confirms it 

Amos and his contemporaries also knew the Levitical law 
which required every burnt offering to be accompanied with a 
meal offering (I*^um. xv. 1-12 ; also chapters xxviii. and xxix.) ; 
for in his rebuke of their unacceptable service, he says to the 
people : ''Yea, though ye offer me your burnt offerings and your 
meal-offerings, I will not accept them" (v. 22). While the 
burnt offering, if we may believe the Bibles, both Old Testa- 
ment and E'ew, is as old as the time of Abel, the meal-offering 
had its origin in the Levitical law, and after the enactment of 
the law it was an invariable accompaniment of the burnt offer- 
ing. This enactment preceded the time of Amos, and was well 
known to the a,postate tribes of the northern kingdom. 

2. Hosea.. All the principal evidences that this prophet 
knew the law of Moses have been presented in answering the 
arguments of the destructive critics, leaving nothing to be said 
in this connection. (See p. 175 ff.) 

3. Isaiah. While the critics have argued from certain pas- 
sages that Isaiah knew nothing of the law of Moses, they have 
overlooked or ignored certain others which prove the opposite. 
We now call attention to the more prominent of these'! 

(1) In ii. 6-8 the prophet says: "Thou hast forsaken thy 
people the house of Jacob, because they be filled with customs 
from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they 
strike hands with the children of strangers. Their land also is 
full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treas- 
ures ; their land also is full of horses, neither is therei any end 



The book of Deuteronomy. 257 

of their chariots. Their land also is full of idols ; they worship 
the work of their o\vii hands, that which their own fingers have 
made." I^OfW here soothsaying, excessive accumulations of 
silver and gold, and the multiplication of chariots and horses, 
are classed as unlawful things in company with idols. But how 
did the people know that these things were at all wrong in the 
sight of God, and esi>ecially that they were of like unlawful- 
ness with idols, unless tiiey had already received some law for- 
bidding them? Could they have learned it from Solomon's 
example? With that alone before them, they would have 
argued from the unexampled wisdom of Solomon that all these 
except soothsaying were praiseworthy. There is not a sentence 
in all that the critics admit to have been written before Isaiah's 
time from which they could have learned it. Only on the sup- 
position that they had the Book of Deuteronomy can this knowl- 
edge be accounted for. In that book soothsaying, while not 
named, is prohibited by prohibiting the whole category of occult 
arts to w^hich it belongs ; and it is classified, as here, with idol- 
atry : "There shall not be found with thee any one tJhat maketh 
his son or his daughter to pass through tlie fire, one that useth 
divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a 
sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter witii a familiar spirit, or 
a wizard, or a necromancer. For Avhosoever doeth these things 
is an abomination to Jehovah" (xviii. 10-12). In the same 
book and the same chapter, as is well known to the critics, the 
kings of Israel are forbidden to multiply horses, or to greatly 
multiply silver and gold (14-17). The people, then, were 
acquainted with this book, and Isaiah relied upon their knowl- 
edge of it in denouncing these practices as well-known sins. 
Professor Cheyne, whose eyes are sharp to discover in all the 
Scriptures anything which he can construe in favor of the 
critical hypothesis, though he comments on this passage, fails to 
see this bearing of it. 

(2) In viii. 19, 20, the prophet says: "When they shall say 
unto you. Seek imto them that have familiar spirits and unto the 
wizards, that chirp and that mutter: should not a people seek 



258 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

unto their God ? on behalf of the living should they seek unto 
the dead ? To the law and to the testimony ! If they speak 
not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.'' 
Here, seeking for information from familiar spirits is put in 
contrast with seeking it from God ; and when men are advised 
to resort to these spirits, the prophet cries, in opposition, "To 
the law and to the testimony !'' and he declares that there is no 
morning, but perpetual night, to those who do not speak "accord- 
ing to this word/' By "this word" he clearly means the word 
of "the law and the testimony," In the word "law" we have 
again the Hebrew word torah, which means, as the critics say, 
the teaching of the prophets and not the law of Moses. But 
where was this teaching of the prophets when Isaiah wrotei? 
Amos and Hosea had taught, but not a word had either said 
about familiar spirits. Only in Deuteronomy (xviii. 11), and 
in Leviticus (xix. 31 ; xx. 6, 27) had consulting with them been 
forbidden, and therefore to these and the other law-books must 
Isaiah have referred as the "law and the testimony." They 
would be thus seeking unto their God ; they would thus be seek- 
ing, "on behalf of the living," to the living and not to the dead. 

Professor Cheyne ideutifies "the law and the testimony" 
here with Isaiah's own previoiis teaching of which, at verse 16, 
he was commanded : "Bind thou up the admonition and seial the 
timony upon my disciples" {Com., in loco) ; but in this pre- 
vious teaching there is not a wotrd about familiar spirits, and 
consequently this attempt at evasion is a failure. 

(3) In chap. xxiv. 5, 6, it is said: "The earth is polluted 
under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed 
the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting cove- 
nant." This shows that laws had been given by God, one o^r 
more ordinances had been appointed, and an everlasting cove- 
nant had been made. What laws, ordinances and covemant can 
these be ? Professor Cheyne says the reference is to the cove- 
nant with Noah. But no covenant was made with E"oah which 
Noah's descendants could break. That covenant was simply a 
promise on God's part that "the waters shall no more become a 
flood to destroy all flesh" (Gen. ix. 16). There was no condi- 



THE BOOK Oh' DEVTEliO^OMW 259 

tion attached to it for men to coanply with, and men, therefore, 
could not break it. The reference is to a covenant which men 
could break, and which men had broken. It was not. the cove- 
nant of circumcision ; for that had not been brokeai. The only 
reference which the words and the facts will admit is tlie cove- 
nant made with Israel when they came out of Egypt, by which, 
on the condition of their keeping his commandments and sta1> 
utes which he would give them, God promised that they should 
be a peculiar treasure to him above all nations (Ex. xix. 3-8). 
This covenant Israel had broken in a most flagrant manner, and 
Judah was breaking it in the reign of Ahaz, when tbis passage 
was probably written. It was a covenant^ too, with which laws 
and ordinances were connected; and this is true only of the 
covenant made at Sinai. It is true that the chapter of which 
this passage forms a part, appears to be a woe pronounced on 
the whole earth; but this does not change the reference; for 
although this covenant was made formally with Israel alone, 
tlie principles involved in it, and the main body of the laws con- 
nected wHth it, are those by which God governs and holds 
accountable to himself the whole world. 

(4) In two passages (xvii. 7, 8; xxvii. 9) Isaiah shows 
knowledge of the restricted worship enjoined in Deuteronomy, 
and enforced by Hezekiah. In the former he says: "In that 
day shall a man look unto his Maker, and his eyes shall have 
respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to 
the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall he have respect 
to that which his fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the 
sun-images." By "the altars, the work of his hands," are meant 
those which the worshiper had made, in distinction from that 
which Moses had made, and which stood in the temple. He 
was to look neither to these altars, nor to the Asherim, nor the 
sun-images which some had erected ; that is, he Avas to look 
neither to the worship of idols, nor to the worship of Jehovah 
on the altars which he had made, and the reference must be to 
the altars on the high places. In contrast with this he was to 
look to his Maker, and have respect to the holy One of Israel ; 



260 THE AUTHORSHIP Oi^ 

and tJiis co'uld be done by worshiping only at tlie appointed 
sanctuary. 

In the latter passage the purging of IsraePs iniquity, or the 
taking away her sin, is conditioned on the destruction of these 
altars, and of all idolatrous images : "Therefore by this shall 
the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit of 
taking away his sin ; when he maketh all the stones of the altar 
as chalk that are beaten in sunder, so that, the Asherim and the 
sun-images shall rise no moTe." 

These passages clearly show that the worship in high places, 
the places in which the altars referred to weire undoubtedly 
erected, instead of being consideired legitimate, as the critics 
contend, until the reign of Josiah, was already condemned by 
the prophet while they were being suppressed by the king. 
Hezekiah was supported in the suppression of them not only by 
the law of God, as we have seen (p. 249), but by the contem- 
porary teaching of the prophet. 

Oheyne evades the force of tliis evidence by representing 
xvii. 7, 8 as a gloss by a late editor of Isaiah, and by ascribing 
xxvii. 9 to his fifth Isaiah, and fixing its date in 332 B. C. 
{Polychrome Isaiah, in loco). But this is falsified by the his- 
toTical fact that Israel did not resort to unauthorized altars, 
Asherim and sun-images after the Babylonian exileu Here his- 
to'ry corrects the historical critic. In his earlier work {Com- 
mentary on Isaiah) he shows conscious misgiving on this point, 
by saying: 

The mention of the symbols of Asherah is not what we should 
expect from a writer living during the Babylonian exile. The phenom- 
enon is, of course, not decisive of the critical question at issue, but 
ought to have its due weight {Com., xxvii. 9). 

But if it is not what we should expect from a writer of 
the exile, when the evil practice had ceased, much less is it what 
we should expect from a writer who lived two hundred years 
after the exile. Evidently, then, he should have given the bene- 
fit of his doubt in favo-r of Isaiah himself as the author, instead 
of ascribing the passage to his imaginary fifth Isaiah. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY, 261 

(5) In chap. xxix. 13 IsaiaJi shows knowledge of a law of 
God regulating worship, by saying: ^'And the Lord said, Foras- 
much as tliis people draw near unto me, and with their mouth 
and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart 
far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men 
which hath been taught them: therefore, behold, I will proceed 
to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous 
work and a wonder." To the sin of drawing near to God 
according to a '^commandment of men,'' is traced the further 
sin of drawing near with the mouth and the lips when the heart 
is far away. But the former sin could not exist without a law 
of God for which the commandment of men had been substi- 
tuted. There was, then, a law of God by which to draw near 
to him, and this had been set aside by the people that they 
might follow some commandment of men. The passage is 
quoted by our Lord in rebuking those in his day who forsook 
the commandment of God in observing the tradition of the elders 
(Matt. XV. 1-9). Cheyne feels the force of this evidence, and 
evades it by appending to the words "a commandment of men,'* 
the remark ^^alluding to pre-canonical collections of laws, which, 
we may infer from Hos. viii. 12 ; Jer. viii. 8, were current in 
some circles in the time of the pre-exilic prophets" (Com., in 
loco). But how could pre-canonical commandments be thus 
condemned before the canonical laws had yet been given ? The 
fact that drawling near to God by the commandment of men is 
condemned at all, implies of necessity that the commandment of 
God on the same subject had been already given, and of this 
no successful evasion is possibla God had then given laws 
by which the people were to draw near to hiim, and, like the 
Pharisees of a later age, the people had accepted in place of 
these some commandments of men. 

(6) In exalting the power of God and his knowledge, the 
prophet exclaims: "Lebanon is not sufficient to bum, nor the 
beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering" (xl. 16). He 
means that the magnificent cedar groves of Lebanon would not 
furnish enough wood to burn an offering worthy of Jehovah, 
nor would all the beasts to be found on those mountains make 



262 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

an adequate offering. What words could express a warmer 
approval of burnt offerings in praise of Jehovah ? 

( 7 ) In relinking Israel for the blindness and deafness which 
caused them to be led captive, he says : "It pleased Jehovah, for 
his righteousness' sake, to magnify the law, and make it honour- 
able" (xlii. 21). He did this by giving them tO' their enemies 
for despising his law. He demands, "Who gave Jacob for a 
spoil, and Israel to the robbers ?" and he answers, "He against 
whom they sinned, in whose ways they would not waJk, neither 
were they obedient to his law" (24). The law of God and dis- 
obedience to it are here regarded precisely as in the account 
given by the authoir of Kings, of the causes which led to Is- 
rael's captivity. 

(8) Israel is again rebuked for neglect of the law in these 
terms: "Yet thou hast not called upon me., O Jacob; but thou 
hast been weary of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me 
the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou hon- 
oured me with thy sacrifices. I have not. made thee to serve 
with offerings, nor wearied thee with frankincense. Thou hast 
bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thon filled 
me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to 
serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities'' 
(xliii. 22-24). The contrast presented in the latter part 
of this rebuke adds greatly to the sting of it. While Grod's 
requirement of offerings had not made them "to serve," that is, 
as slaves, and the frankincense which he had required had not 
"wearied" them by its quantity or its frequency, they have 
made him to "serve" with their sins, and wearied him with 
their iniquities. N^eglect of offerings of animals and of incense 
had brought their calamities upon them; but this could not 
have been, if, as the critics affirm, the Levitical law had not 
yet been given. 

(9) In depicting the blessedness of Israel at some future 
day, beginning with the exultant strain, "Arise, shine; for thy 
light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee," the 
prophet says: "All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to- 
gether unto thee; the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thec' : 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 263 

they sliall come with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify 
the house of my glory" (Ix. 7). Thus the glorification of God's 
house was to reach its consummation by tlie acceptable offering 
of flocks and rams upon his altar. IN'otice., that the single altar 
required by the law of Deuteronomy, and the abundant sacri- 
fices of the Levitical law, are both distinctly recognized, tlius 
proving tbat both were already known and held in honor 
by Israel. 

(10) Finally, tbe offering of sacrifices by men who have 
"chosen their own ways," and whose souls are "delighting in 
their abominations," is held up for the abhori'-ence of the people, 
as in the last chapter of the book. The prophet says : "He that 
killetb an ox is as he that slayetb a man; he that sacrificeth. a 
lamb, as he that breaketh a dog-'s neck ; he that offeretih an obla- 
tion, as he that offeretb swine's blood; he that bumeth. frank- 
incense, as he that blessetb an idol : yea, they have chosen their 
own ways, and tbeir soul deligbtetih in tihedr abominations" 
(Ixvi. 3). 

It is claimed by our critics, one and all, that the last four of 
the passages just cited were not written by Isaiah. The more 
conservative among them hold tbat the last twenty-seven chap- 
ters of Isaiah w^ere written by an unknown prophet who lived 
in the last ten years of tbe Babylonian exile. But even on 
this hypothesis, though this writer would have known the Book 
of Deuteronomy, he would not have known, as we see that lie 
certainly did, the Levitical law of sacrifices w'hich was writteai 
later. But the more radical, and certainly the shrewder set, 
deny some of these chapters to even the "second Isaiah," and, 
to prevent being caught in the trap just pointed out, they claim 
that portions of these chapters were written at various intervals 
dowTi to the time of Alexander the Great, A. D. 332. Thus, 
Cheyne credits only chapters xl.-xlviii. to the "second Isaiah," 
just one-third of the whole number; and he distributes the 
others between third, fourth and fifth Isaiahs. He does this 
in order to prevent tlie real Isaiah, or even the "second Isa- 
iah," from knowing the Levitical law, a knowledge of which 
by them would shatter the critical theory. When learned and 



264 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

critical scholars are thus compelled to run their theories like 
chased foxes into the ground, a man of common sense wants 
no better evidence that the theories are indefensible. 

4. Jeremiah. As in the case of Hosea, we have presented 
both sides of the evidence from the Book of Jeremiah w'hile 
answering the arguments of the critics. (See Part First, §8, 6). 

§10. The Testimoitx' of Jesus. 

1. The Positions of the Parties. We now come to testimoaiy 
which, if explicit and unambiguous, should settle this contro- 
versy finally and foreiver. But at the threshold we encountea* 
from both extremes of the neiw criticism objections to the intro- 
duction of it. Kuenen expresses the objection of the radical 
wing in words so' striking- and emphatic that they have been 
quoted often as the keynote of opposition from that quarter. 
He says : 

We must either cast aside as worthless our dearly bought scientific 
method, or must forever cease to acknowledge the authority of the New 
Testament in the domain of the exegesis of the Old (Prophets and 
Prophecy in Israel, 487). 

Shocking as this statement must ever be to a, believer in 
Christ, it presents the necessary position of unbelievers ; for if 
Jesus Christ possessed no supernatural intelligence, he was 
incapable of giving competent testimony in regard tO' the author- 
ship of Old Testament books. As a witness he must be ruled 
out, and ruled out he is, directly or indirectly, by all the analyti- 
cal critics. On the contrary, to all believers in hi'm his testi- 
mony settles all questions on which he has deigned to speak. 

Kuenen, in the remark just quoted, betrays the unexpressed 
conviction that his "dearly bought scientific method" must be 
pronounced worthless, and must be cast aside as such, if the 
authority of the 'Nesw Testament is acknowledged. In this he 
proves himself more candid and more logical than are many of 
his half-way pupils who profess faith in Christ. And let it 
not slip from our memory that the most radical of destructive 
critics recognize and frankly admit an irreconcilable antagonism 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 265 

between their theories respecting the Old Testament, and the 
statements on the subject in the New Testament. 

On tJie other hand, Pro'f. C. A. Briggs expresses the view 
of the "evangelical critics/' in tbe folloiwing paragraph: 

Those who still insist upon opposing higher criticism with tra- 
ditional views, and with the supposed authority of Jesus Christ and 
his apostles, do not realize the perils of the situation. Are they ready 
to risk the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Bible, and the exist- 
ence of the church, upon their interpretation of the words of Jesus 
and his apostles? Do they not see that they throw up a wall that will 
prevent any critic, who is an unbeliever, from ever becoming a believer 
in Christ and the Bible? They would force evangelical critics to choose 
between truth and scholarly research on the one side, and Christ and 
tradition on the other {Bib. Study, 196). 

This autiior is equally opposed, with Kuenen to the introduc- 
tion of the testimony of the ^New Testament on this subject, but 
on opposite grounds. He has such confidence in the "dearly 
bought scientific method,'' that the thought of its being proved 
worthless does not excite his fears, but he sees in it great peril 
to "the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Bible, and the 
existence of the church." He sees in it the likelihood that no 
critic who is an unbeliever will ever become a believer, a change 
highly improbable under any circumstances; and he sees in it 
the dire necessity that such men as himself shall be forced to 
choose between the new criticism and Christ — a, plain intimar 
tion that they would choose the new criticism. 

And yet, this author, in another place, takes the highest 
ground in favor of submitting to the authority of Jesus and his 
apostles. He says: 

The authority of Jesus Christ, to all who know him to be their 
divine Saviour, outweighs all other authority whatever. A Christian 
must follow his teachings in all things as the guide into all truth. 
The authority of Jesus Christ in involved in that of his apostles 
iib., 186). 

Xothing could be. better, or better said, than this. We 
should cast aside, then, all fear of consequences, and investigate 
with perfect candor the sayings of Jesus and the apostles on this 
subject Whatever our conclusions derived from the study of 
the Old Testament may be., we must cast them aside as worth- 
less, as Kuenen says, if we find them in conflict with the testi- 



266 >rHE AUTHORSHIP OF 

momy of tihe Xew Testament ; and whatever tlie result as respects 
critics wiJio are nofw unbelievers^ we must let Christ be true if it 
makes every man a liar. 

In order that, our investigatioai of this most important ques^ 
tion may be thorough, taking nothing for granted, we shall 
inquire first, Did Jesus hnow the facts invoilved in the Old Tesr 
tament criticism ? If he did not, then any affirmation by him 
on the subject proveis nothing. Second, Did he affirm anything 
on this subjecti ? If he both knew and affirmed, it follows that 
what he affirmed must be. received with implicit faith by those 
who believe in him. Had our investigation of the Old Testa- 
ment, which we have just now concluded, led us to accept the 
conclusions of the adverse critics, a contrary affirmation on the 
part of Jesus would be sufficient ground for reversing the deci- 
sion, supposing that we had been misled by ingenious sophistry ; 
but as the matter stands, this new testimony is not really needed 
except for the purpose of finding more solid ground for our 
final convictions, than human judgment at its best can afford. 

2. Did Jesus Know ? To the question. Did Jesus know who 
wrote the books of the Old Testament, the great lights, of 
modern criticism, such as Wellh,a,usen and Kuenen, together with 
all the lesser lights of the radical school, answer with an 
emphatic "^Of." Denying, as they do, his miraculous power, 
they also deny his miraculous knowledge, and claim that he 
knew, on such subjects, only what he learned from his teachers. 
They limit the knowledge of tJie apostles in the same way. As 
a necessary consequence, the testimony of Jesus on such sub- 
jects, no matter how explicit and positive it may be, has, with 
them, no weight whatever. 

When believing scholars began to favor the Old Testament 
criticism of these unbelievers., they soon perceived that the 
testimony of Jesus and the a,postles would have tO' be reckoned 
with, and so they put their ingenuity to work in the search for 
some method of evading the apparent force o>f this testimony. 
The first effort in this direction that came under my own obser- 
vation was an essay in the Expositor for July, 1891, from the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 267 

pen of Dr. Alfred Plummer, under the heading, ^The Advance 
of Christ in Sophia." Starting frottn the statement of Luke, 
that Jesus, when a child, "increased in stature and in wisdom" 
(sophia in the Greek), he argued that this increase in wisdom 
may ha.ve continued throughout the life of Jesus, and that, 
consequently, at every period of his life, even tO' the last, there 
may have been some things- which he did not yet know, and 
among these the matters involved in Old Testament criticism. 
Add to the conclusion thus reached the fact that^ according to 
his own statement, he did not know the day or the hour of his 
own second coming, and there remains but a short step to the 
conclusion that he may have been as yet ignorant of the author- 
ship of the so-called book of Moses, and the reality of the facte 
recorded in it^ A little later. Canon Gore introduced us to the 
doctrine of the Kenosis, as it is called, arguing the probability 
of our Lord's ignorance on critical subjects from the statement 
of Paul that though he was in the form of God, and thought 
it not a prize to be equal with God, he emptied himself, and 
took the form of a servant (Phil. ii. 6-8). This emptying 
included the laying aside of divine knowledge, so that he did 
not possess the latter while he was in the flesh. By this inge- 
nious method of reasoning these gentlemen thought themselves 
justifiable in laying aside the testimony of him who« had pre- 
viously been regarded by all believers as the most important 
witness who could testify in the case. This they do "very rev- 
erently," and not with the irreverence with which infidel critics 
had already reached the same result. The accepted title of 
this process is "reverent criticism." Reverent it is in manner 
and tone, but not more so than the approach of Judas in the 
garden to kiss his Lord; and we are to see whether it is less 
deceptive. 

I sfuppose that there is no intelligent person who now doubts 
that the knowledge of Jesus, during his infancy and his boy- 
hood, was limited. But., after he received, at his baptism, the 
Holy Spirit without measure (John iii. 34), that Spirit which, 
in the words of Paul, knoweth all things, even the deep things 



268 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

of God (I. Cor. ii. 10), who shall dare to assign any limit 
to his knoiwledge additional to that which he has himself 
assigned? Who but himself can now, or could then, have 
knowledge of eveoi this limitation ? He often displayed mirac- 
ulous knowledge, as when he detected the unexpressed thoughts 
of men, when he gave directions to Peter with reference to the 
fish which he would catch with a stater in its 'mouth, and when 
he directed him and John about preparing the paschal supper. 
He also showed a conscious knowledge of his own pre-existence 
when he said to the Jews, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to 
see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Before Abraham 
was, I am" (John viii. 56, 58) ; and when he prayed to his 
Father, "I have glorified thee on the earth : I have finished the 
work that thou gaveet me to do. And now, Father, glorify 
thou me with thine own self with the glory that I had with 
thee before the world was'' (John xvii. 4, 5). If he had 
miraculous knowledge, as these facts demonstrate, who shall 
dare to set a limit tO' his exercise of it? Can a "reverent" 
critic do so ? 

Our Lord's own statement that he knew not the day or the 
hour of his second coming is one of the most astonishing utter- 
ances that ever fell from his lips. Its singularity is not realized 
until it is considered in its connection with the other things 
belonging to his second coming, which he did know. He knew 
that it would occur after the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
after Jerusalem shall cease to be trodden under foot by the 
Gentiles; he knew by whom he will be accompanied — by all 
the angels of God ; he knew what men will be doing when he 
comes — that they will be engaged in all the avocations of life, 
as when the flood came upon the world, and as when fire came 
down upon Sodom ; he knew what he will do when he comes — 
that he will awake all the dead, sit on a throne of glory, assem- 
ble all the descendants of Adam before him, dividing them as 
a shepherd separateis the sheep from the goats ; he knew that he 
wnll call those on his right hand into his eternal kingdom, and 
expel those on his left into eternal fire prepared for the devil 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 269 

and his angels. He even knew tbat two men would be in the 
same bed, tbat two women would be grinding at the same hand- 
mill, and that in each, instance one would be taken and the other 
left. If he knew all this respecting his second coming, how is it 
possible that he did not know the irecise time of it? This 
question no man on earth can answer; and I presume that the 
same is true of the angels in heaven. It would be an abso- 
lutely incredible statement, had it not cor.e from lips that can 
not speak falsely. And are we not here justifiable in saying 
that he who assigns any other limit to the knowledge of Jesus 
is guilty of a presumption that is near akin to blasphemy? 
I think so. And I think that the soul of every man who wor- 
ships Jesus as Lord must shudder at the thought of charging 
him with ignorance respecting the Holy Scriptures, which 
were written by holy men guided by his own Holy Spirit. 

3 Did Jesus affirm ? We now ask, Did Jesus make any 
explicit affirmations in respect, to the authorship of Old Testa- 
ment books, or to the reality of events recorded in them? 
Before producing any ins-tances of the kind, I will first quote 
soime of the utterances of scholars who deny that he did, and 
try to test the grounds of their denial ; and, as Professor Briggs 
has elaborated the argument on the negative side more exten- 
sively than any other recent writer of my acquaintance, he 
shall be heard first. 

Before I come to closer issues, it may benefit some readers 
to see how this professor deals with a sweeping remark by 
which it has become common to wave aside the whole discussion 
on which we are entering. Quoting this remark from its origi- 
nator, the professor says: 

Clericus went too far when he said that Jesus Christ and his apos- 
tles did not come into the world to teach criticism to the Jews. Then 
he adds: "The response of Herman Witsius, that Jesus came to teach 
the truth, and could not be imposed upon by common ignorance, or be 
induced to favor vulgar errors, is just" (Bih. Study, p. 184). 

This answer must be approved by every one who has faith 
in Jesus as a teacher sent from God. 

Immediately after pronouncing this just judgment, our 
professor proceeds to say : "And yet we can not altogether deny 



270 THE AVTHORSHIP OF 

the principle of acoonnmodation in the life and teachings of 
Jesus." He srupports this assertion by referring to what Jesus 
says of the permission of divorce under Moses, saying that 
"Moses, becaaisei of the hardness of their hearts, suffered 
ancient Israel to divorce their wives for reasons which the 
higher dispensation will not admit as valid." This proves that 
God, under the former dispensation, gave Israel a law which 
he would not have given had the statei of their hearts been 
different; but ho«w does this show" that the principle of accom- 
modation is found "in the life and teachings of Jesus'' f The 
proof and the proposition to be proved are as far apart as Moses 
and Jesus. Moreover, it is not correct to say that, the reasons 
for this law were such as "the higher dispensation will not 
admit as valid;" for, in presenting them to his hearers, Jesus 
did admit that they were valid at the^ time in which they were 
acted upon. Moses did right in granting the privilege of 
divorce at will, althongh it was not permitted in the beginning, 
and was not to be permitted under the new dispensation. 

In pursuance of this same line of thought, Professor Briggs 
quotes from Dr. S. H. Turner the following sentence: 

It is not required in a religious or inspired teacher, nor, indeed, 
would it be prudent or right, to shock the prejudices of his uninformed 
hearers, by inculcating truths which they are unprepared to receive 
(i6., p. 185). 

So far as this is intended to apply to- the question in hand, 
truths about the authorship and credibility of Old Testament 
books, it is wide of the mark; for no one claims that Jesus 
should have corrected prevailing beliefs on critical questions. 
The only question is, Did he affirm the correctness of those 
beliefs? But, apart from this, the principle here laid down 
is untrue to the facts in the life of Jesus ; for he was constantly 
shocking the prejudices of his hearers by inculcating truths 
which they were unprepared to receive; and it was on account 
of his persistence in inculcating such truths that they hated 
him and crucified him. The same is true of the apostles, and 
of all the prophets of Israel. The same is true also of Pro- 
fessor Briggs himself; for it was because of his inculcating, 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 271 

what he regards as just such truths on higher criticism, in the 
pi*esenoe of a peoiple not prepared to receive them on account 
of their alleged ignorance^ that, he was tried as a heretic and 
dismissed from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. This 
experience, Avhich has come upon him since he wrote the book 
from which I quote, onght to convince him, if it hasi not^ that 
the sta,teimeint in question is erroneons. 

On the next page (186) ProfessoT Briggs repeats, in a 
slightly different form, but in closer connection with the (|uesr 
tion at issue, the remark just disposed of. lie says: "Tliere 
were no sufficient reasons why he should coirrect the prevailing 
views as to Old Testament books, and by his authority deter- 
mine these literary questions. '^ Of course, there were not,; 
especially if those "prevailing views" were coTrect, as we 
believa But no one claims that he should have corrected those 
views, even if tliey were incorrect. We claim only that, if they 
were inco-rrect, he conld not have endo-rsed them ; and the only 
question is. Did he, or did he not^ endorsei them? 

Another evasive remark follows on the same page: 

If they [Jesus and the apostles] used the language of the day in 
speaking of the Old Testament books, it does not follow that they 
adopted any of the views of authorship and editorship that went with 
these terms in the Talmud, or in Josephus, or in the apocalypse of 
Ezra; for we are not to interpret their words on this or any other 
subject by Josephus, or the Mishna, or the apocalypse of Ezra, or by 
any other external authorities, but by the plain grammatical and con- 
textual sense of their words themselves. 

All this is strictly true, but it amounts tO' nothing in this 
discussion 'No one contends that the inspired utterances a.bout 
Old Testament books involve an adoption of the views of any 
of the authors mentioned. Everybody agrees that these utter- 
ances are to be interpreted "by the plain grammatical and con- 
textual sense of their words ;" but in this interpretation refei^ 
ence must invariably be had tO' the sense in which his hearers 
understood the words employed. Jesus could not, in address- 
ing certain liearers, employ the deceptive trick of using "the 
language of the day" in a sense quite different from what was 
customary, without an intimation that he was doing so. When, 



272 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tlien, lie used ^'tihe language of tlie day" in speaking of Old 
Testament books, he used it as his heiarers understood it, and 
his eixact meianing is to be gatheired from "the plain grammat- 
ical and contextual sense of the words themselves." I suppose 
that ProfessoT Briggs would accept this modification of his 
remark. 

After dealing with these general remarks of Professo-r 
Briggs intended tO' break in advance the force of any testimony 
of Jesus on CTitical questions, I now come tO' something more 
specific — his application of critical principles toi the Book of 
Psalms. Here he does a, gratuitous work by labouring to refute 
the idea that David wrote all of the psalms in this book. I 
think it impossible for any one who has ever read the Psialms 
to conclude that David wrote all of them, unless he should come 
to the question with a, foregone conclusion, and employ the 
same kind of special pleading common with the dest,ructive 
critics. A sample of this kind of sophistry, covering a, whole 
page in fine type, is copied by the professor from an old Pu- 
ritan coimmentary on Hebrews; and on reading it one is strik- 
ingly reminded of some later pages from the professor's own 
pen. Such is the N^w Testament evidence, however, in favor 
of the Davidic authorship of six of the Psalms, that on this 
evidence he admits them tO' be- David's. This is an admission 
that the testimony of Jesus or an apostle on the question of 
authorship, when specific, is conclusive. Among the six is 
Psalm ex., and of this I wish to speak particularly, because it 
serves better than any 0)ther the purpose of determining 
whether the testimony of Jesus on the question of authorship 
is conclusive. Professor Briggs concedes that it is, at least 
in this instance, and yet. he does not give the evidence its full 
force. His quotation of the words of Jesus is incompletei, and 
his argument based on them is weaker than the text justifies. 
But of this., more hereafter. (See Bih. Study, 187-190.) 

Notwithstanding this decisive judgment expressed in Bib- 
lical Study in the year 1883, it is by no means certain that 
Professor Briggs is still of the same opinion. The critics of 



THE BOCK OF DEUTERONOMY. 216 

his school are progressive; and the conclusions of 1x>da.j may 
not be those of to-morrow. Six years later, Professor Driver 
published his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testa^ 
ment, and he, though considered a conservative, takes the» oppo- 
site ground. He says: 

This Psalm [the 110th], though it may be ancient, can hardly 
have been composed by David {Int., 384, note). 

In support of this conclusion he indulges in some very 
singular reasoning. He first says: ^'If read without pre ju- 
dicium, it produces the irresistible impression of having been 
written, not by a king with reference to an invisible spiritual 
being standing above him as his superior, but by a prophet 
with reference to the theocratic hing/' Just so. This is pre- 
cisely the way in which Jesus interprets it. He claims that 
it was written with reference to the theocratic king; that is, 
with reference to himself after he entered upon his mediato- 
rial reign. It was not written by a king with reference to "an 
invisible spiritual being standing above him," but by a prophet, 
who was also a king, with reference to a glorified being in 
human form, yet destined to be far above every earthly king. 
The author goes on to give three reasons in support of this 
undisputed proposition ; but as the proposition is admitted, it 
is not necessary to consider the reasons. 

I^ot satisfied with this efl^ort, the author, in the same para- 
graph, makes another and distinct attempt to get rid of the 
Lord's testimony. He says: 

In the question addressed by our Lord to the Jews (Matt, xxii. 41-46; 
Mark xii. 35-37; Luke xx. 41-44) his object, it is evident, is not to 
instruct them on the authorship of the Psalm, but to argue from its 
contents; and though he assumes the Davidic authorship, accepted gen- 
erally at the time, yet the cogency of his argument is unimpaired, so 
long as it is recognized that the Psalm is a Messianic one, and that 
the august language used in it of the Messiah is not compatible with 
the position of one who was a mere human son of David (i&., 384, 385, 
note). 

These remarks could be regarded as mere trifling were 
they not found in a volume written with the most serious pur- 
pose by a "reverent" author. They seem to have been written 
with only a vague remeanbrance of the words of Jesus to which 



274 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

they refer, and certainly witiiout a close examination of them. 
Let us see what Jesus actually says: 

"Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked 
them a question, saying, What think ye of the Christ"? whose son is he? 
They say unto him. The son of David. He saith to them, How then 
doth David in the spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord saith to my 
Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I put thine enemies under thy feet? 
It David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?" 

It is as clear as day that the argument of Jesus depends 
for its validity on the fa<?t that David is the author. True, 
as Professor Driver siays, his object was not, to "instruct them 
on the authorship;'^ for that they perfectly understood; yet his 
argument is woirthless if David was not the author. If the 
author was some other prophet than David, what, would be the 
sense of demanding, "If David calleth him Lord, how is he his 
son T' That he was the son of the man who called him Lord, is 
ilie essential fad in the argument; and any attempt tO' elimi- 
nate or to obscure this fact, is a bad case of wresting the 
Scriptures. 

Professor Cheyne, the most radical of English critics, 
unites with the German radicals in denying the Davidic au- 
thorship of tjhis Psa,lm, but, unlike Professor Driver and other 
conservatives, he saves himself the hopeless task of trying to 
reconcile this denial with the words of Jesus. (See his Com- 
mentary on the Psalms^ xvi. 301.) In thus ruling Jesus out 
of court as a witness in the case, he plays a daring game, but 
he saves himself the necessity of wresting away from the w^ords 
of Jesus the only meaning which they can convey. It is not 
easy to decide which is the preferable alternativa The man 
who takes either alternative antagonizes Jesus gratuitously, 
and he does so at his peril. 

I now come to the testimonies of Jesus respecting the 
authorship of the Pentateuch. But, before considering par- 
ticular instances of this testimony, it may be well to quote 
what Professor Driver says on the general question of such 
testimony : 

There is no record of the question, whether a particular portion 
of the Old Testament was written by Moses, or David, or Isaiah, having 



THE BOOK OF DEi'TERONOMY. 275 

ever been submitted to him; and had it been so submitted, we have no 
means of knowing what his answer would have been (Int., xii., xiii.). 

This first statement is tnie; and it is equally true that no 
advocate of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch has ever 
claimed tliat such a question was submitted to Jesus. But 
Professor Driver knows, as well as he knows his owti name, 
that a man may say who wrote a certain book, or part of a 
book, without having been questioned on the subject. I wonder 
if, in lecturing before his classes in the university, he never 
names the authors of books which he quotes till some student 
calls for the naimes. What kind of teacher would Jesus have 
been had he nev^er given his hearers a piece of information till 
they called for it ? x\nd what would have been thought of 
him if, in quoting books to his hearers, he had never given the 
na'mes of the authors quoted till they were called for? How 
could tihis ingenious writer have pemied the sentence just 
quoted without being conscious that he was evading the ques- 
tion which he was professing to discuss? If this is throwing 
doubt on his perfect candor, respect for his good sense forces 
me to it^ 

True, we have no record of the question being submitted. 
Did Moses or David or Isaiah write this ot that ? but wha.t 
does this amount to if we find Jesus, at his O'^vn initiative, 
affirming that Moses or David or Isaiah wrote this or that? 
Is his voluntary aifirmation to be called in question or 
explained away because no one had called for it ? I think not. 
Turn, then, to what I shall style one of his indirect affirma- 
tions, and let us come to closer quarters in the argaimeTit. In 
his disputation with the Sadducees, Jesus demanded: "Have 
ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake 
to him, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and 
the God of Jacob?" (Mark xii. 26). 

Xow, it is admitted by all scholars that there was in the 
hands of the Jews at that period a book, always written as a 
single book, and known by them as "The Book of Moses." It 
is admitted that that book is the one known to us as the Pen- 
tateuch, no^v divided into five books. It is admitted that the 



276 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Jews universally believed that this book was written by Mose®, 
and that for this reason they called it "The Book of Moses/' 
When, then, addressing men who> thus believed, Jesuts calls it 
"The Book of Moses/' did he oonfirm their belief that Moses 
was its author, or did he not? To test this, we need only to 
suppose that, after the conversation, some one had said to the 
Sadducee who had been the spokesman of his party, "That 
man Jesus does not believe that Moses wrote the book from 
which yo'U and he quoted;" what would the Sadducee have 
answered ? Would he not have said, "You are mistaken ; he 
called it ^The Book of Moses,' just as we do; and if he did not 
mean what he said, he talks deceitfully." 

Here we^ are met by an argument which Professor Briggs 
has stated with as much force as can be given it, and it is 
endorsed by all the "critics," whether "radicals" or "evangel- 
icals." Quoting and endorsing the words of Professor Brown, 
his colleague, he says: 

The use of a current pseudonym to designate the author no more 
committed Jesus to the declaration that that was the author's real 
name, than our use of the expression, "Junius says," would commit 
us to a declaration that the "Letters of Junius" were composed by a 
person of that name (Bib. 8tudy, 189, 190, note). 

This argument has more plausibility than the one quoted 
above from Professor Driver; but it is equally fallacious. To 
a class of students correctly informed as to the letters of 
Junius, Professor Briggs or Professor Brown could use the 
expression, "Junius says," without misleading them; but sup- 
pose either of them was addressing a class of students who were 
so ill-info'rmed that they supposed a man whose real name was 
Junius to have been the author of these letters ; and suppose 
that the professor, in addressing them, knew that they so 
thought ; would he then feel at liberty to quote the letters again 
and again, saying, "Thus saith Junius" ? ^N'either of them 
would think of doing it. They would be ashamed to do it. 
They would feel bound in honor to either inform the students, 
or quote the words as those of a distinguished writer without 
naming him. They would feel conscientiously bound to avoid 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY 277 

committing themselves before that class to its own ignorant 
conception. Yet they openly charge on Jesus our Lord a prac- 
tice in which they would themselves disdain to indulge. 

We may try this argument by another example. !N"either 
of the three professors, Driver, Briggs nor Brown, believes that 
Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews ; does any one of them 
ever quote that document as an epistle of Paul ? Does any 
one of them ever say, "Thus saith the apostle Paul," and follow 
this with a quotation from Hebrews ? They would consider it 
unmanly and deceptive to do so. Why, then, will tlu&y charge 
Jesus with quoting a book which he knew Moses did not write, 
and styling it "The Book of Moses" ? How easily he could 
have avoided committing himself thus, by saying to the Sad- 
ducees, "Have ye not read in the book of your law?" 

Such scholars as these would not thus wrest the words of 
Jesus, and do him this dishonor, were they not impelled by a 
false theory. 

The testimony of Jesus respecting the authorship of Old 
Testament books has been passed over in a very cursory manner 
by most of the destructive critics. They have had little to 
say about it^ because they have found little that they could say 
with profit to their own cause. Any position taken by respectr 
able scholars which affects in the slightest degree the absolute 
authority belonging to all utterances of Jesus our Lord, or the 
absolute sanctity of his character, demands our profoundest 
consideration before we can consider it with favor. If he 
made any affirmation which was not true, his authority as a 
teacher is invalidated; and if he affirmed anything which he 
did not hnoiv to be' true, he fell short of absolute truthfulness. 
Perfect veracity demands that a man shall not only avoid 
affirmations which he knows to be false, but all that he does 
not know to be true. 

We ask, then, most solemnly, and with a view to the most 
candid answer. Did Jesus, on any occasion, affirm unequivo- 
cally the Mosaic authorship of the writings commonly ascribed 
to Moses ? Let us try his words addressed to the Jews at the 



^78 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

feast of tabernacles, and recoirded in John vii. 19 : ''Did not 
Mo&es give yon the la.w, and yet none of you doeth the lawf' 

That the Jews had at that, time a book which they knew 
as the law of Moses, and which we know as the Pentateuch, 
is unquestioned and unquestionable. It is equally unquestion- 
able that by ''the law^' Jesus here meant that book; fo^r, on 
any other hypothesis, we should have to suppose that he dealt 
uncandidly with his hearers. He could not have meant by 
"the law" some nucleus of the law which came from Moses, 
while the main body of it was an accumulation growing out of 
the experience of ages, as some critics have conjectured; for 
candor required him to use the expression as his hearers under- 
stood it. ^N^either conld he have referred to any particular 
statute of the law which may have come from Moses, while the 
rest had some other origin; for his demand had reference to 
the law as a whole, of which he denied that any of them had 
kept it. They had all observed some parts of it, but none had 
kept it as a whole. There is no uncertainty, then, as to what 
he meant by "the law.'^ What did he mean by the demand, 
"Did not Moses give you the law f ^ ? In this question he 
employs the rhetorical figure of erotesis, which is the mos.t 
emphatic foirm of making an assertion. It assumes that neither 
with the speaker nor with his hearers is any other answer pos- 
sible but the one implied. Another exalmple is the demand, 
"Did I not choose you, the twelve?" (John vi. 70). Another, 
the well-known words of Paul, "Was Paul crucified for you ? 
or were you baptized into the name of Paul?" (I. Cor. i. 13). 
His demand, then, is the most emphatic assertion possible that 
neither with himself nor with his hearers conld there be any 
doubt that Moses gave them the^ law. Affirmation of the Mosaic, 
authorship of the law more emphatic or more explicit there 
could not be. But Jesus could not thus affirm that which he 
did not know to be true; and it follows as an irresistible con- 
clusion that Jesus knew Moses to be the author of the law 
which the Jews connected with his name. 

There is not room here for any of the evasive remarks 
employed by destructive critics to oibscure the Lord's testimony. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 279 

The illustration of the lettei-s of Junius can not be applied; 
for, to (make it applicable, botli the speaker and the hearer 
^lould believe that the author of the letters was a man named 
Junius, and both would be deceived. Professor Briggs' remark 
that when Jesus ascribes a certain law to Moses, he does not 
assume that Moses wrote the book in which that law is now 
found, can not apply ; fo-r it is of the law as a whole, and not 
of any particular statute, that the demand is made. Neither 
can Professor Driver's assertion, that no question raised by 
modern criticism was presented to Jesus fo^r an answer, apply 
in this case; for, while it is true that no such question was 
propounded, Jesus did, without a question, make the demand 
of his own accord, and use the unquestioned fact of the Mosaic 
authorship to condemn his enemies. If any other than Moses 
had given the law, his argument would have been fallacious. 

Finally, we must not fail to observe that^ if Jesus had not 
desired to commit himself on the authorship of the law, it 
would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have 
avoided it without weakening the rebuke which he adminis- 
tered. He could have said, as even radical critics are now 
willing to say, ^^Did not God give you the law ?" meaning that 
God gave it, not by inspiration, but in a providential way. Or 
he could have said, ^^Do you not believe that Moses gave you 
the law ? and yet none of you doeth it." 

The fact that he cho^e neither of these, nor any other fom 
of speech which would have been non-committal on the ques- 
tion of authorship, and that instead thereof he chose to commit 
himself in the most emphatic manner that human speech with- 
out an oath would permit, proves that it was his deliberate 
intention to do so, and to thus leave on record his positive testi- 
mony on this important question. If he had known — and who 
may say that he did not? — that this question Avould arise in 
the coming ages, he could not have anticipated it with a more 
decisive answer. How vain the remark, then, which we have 
quoted from Professor Driver, that if critical questions had 
been propounded to Jesus, we have no means of knowing how 
he would have answered them ! 



280 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

The most specific affirmatioin by Jesus of the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch is found in the fifth chapter of John, 
and it reads thus: ^^Think not that I will accuse you to the 
Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, on whom 
ye have set your hope. For if ye believed Mouses, ye would 
believe me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his 
writings, how shall ye believe my words f In this passage 
three facts receive emphasis, and they are emphasized as the 
grounds on which the unbelievers addressed are condemned. 
The first is that Moses, the Moses on whom they ^^seit their 
hope," is their accuser. Second, the ground on which Moses 
accuses them is, that they did not believe what he wrote of 
Jesus: ^'If ye beiieve Moses^, ye would believe me; for he 
wrote of me." A more explicit statement that. Moses wrote 
of Jesus could not be framed in human speech. Third, the 
ground on which Moses accuses them is stated in another 
form, by the assertion that they believed not certain writings' 
which are called his : "If ye believe not his writings, how 
shall ye believe my words?" 

N'ow, it is a historical fact, unquestioned and unquestion- 
able, as we have said before, that the Jews addressed by Jesus 
had certain writings which they knew as the writings of Moses. 
Jesus here distinctly recognizes them as such. 'Not only so, but 
by placing these writings of Moses in antithesis with his own 
words, he leaves as little room to doubt that these writings came 
from Moses as that his own words came from himsalf. Fur- 
thermore, he afiirms, and makes it the basis of his argument, 
that in those writings Moses wrote of Jesus — in what passage 
or in what words, it is not needful that we now inquire — and 
he declares that Mouses is the accuser of the unbelievers because 
they believed not what Moses thus wrote: If it was not Moses 
himself who thus wrote, and if the writings referred toi as his 
w^re not his, then the argument of Jesus falls to the ground, 
and this whole passage from his lips is meaningless. And if 
here we have not an unequivocal and unmistakable afiirmation 
of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateaich,, I defy any man 
to frame such an afiirmation. 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 281 

Perhaps some of my readers are ready to ask, What answer 
do the destructive critics give to this presentation ? The ques- 
tion is pertinent. If they have no answer to give, they should 
hold their peace forever on the main issue. The radicals see 
the difficulty very clearly, and they answer, with all candor^ that 
Jesus w^as mistaJven. They make no effort to explain away 
his words. The Evangelicals, as Professor Briggs calls them, 
have seen the difficulty; it would be disparaging to them to 
hint that they have not ; but, so far as my reading has extended, 
they have not grappled with it. This we shall now sho\v as 
to Professors Driver and Eriggs, by quoting all that they say 
on tbe subject 

4. The Xew Critics on This Testimony. Professor Driver 

formally introduces the issue on page xii. of the preface to his 

Introduction, and he states it thus: 

It is objected, however, that some of the conclusions of critics 
respecting the Old Testament are incompatible with the authority of 
our blessed Lord, and that in loyalty to him we are precluded from 
accepting them. 

After this very fair statement of the issue, he proceeds with 
a series of statements intended to show that the objection is not 
w^ell taken. The first is a cautious approach to the discussion, 
and is stated in these words ; 

That our Lord appealed to the Old Testament as the record of a 
revelation in the past, and as pointing forward to himself, is un- 
doubted ; but these aspects of the Old Testament are perfectly consistent 
with a critical view of its structure and growth. 

This remark is non-comimittal. Of course, these aspects of 
the Old Testament are consistent with a critical view of its 
structure and gro^\^h ; for instance, wntli the critical view taken 
in Home's Introduction, or in Bissell's Origin and Structure 
of the Pentateuch — the critical view which Drivei* and others 
now denounce as traditional. But the question is. Are they 
consistent with the critical view taken by Professor Driver? 
They are certainly not consistent with that taken by Kuenen 
and Wellhausen; for they both deny "a revelation" in the 
proper sense of tlie word, and they deny the "pointing forward'* 
to Jesus of which Driver speaks. On the real issue, whether 



282 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

they are consistent witli the critical views of Driver and those 

■who stand with him, he thus far gives only his affirmation. 

His next remark is this: 

That our Lord, in so appealing to it, designed to pronounce a 
verdict on the authority and age of its different parts, and to foreclose 
all future inquiry into these subjects, is an assumption for which no 
sufficient ground can be alleged. 

This remark is totally irrelevant. The expression, "m so 
appealing to it," means, in the connection, appealing to it a.s 
**^the record of a revelation in the past, and pointing forward to 
himself." As a matter of oomrse, in so alluding to it he pro- 
nounced no verdict on the authorship and age of its different 
parts ; neither has anyhody eiver said that, he did. Why answeir 
objections that have nevetr been made? Why not answer the 
objections which have been made, instead of thus setting up 
and assailing men of straw ? This is thei common resort of 
sophists when they are conscioius of inability to answer the real 
objections of their opponents. 

But our critic continues in the same strain by adding: 

Had such been his aim, it would have been out of harmony with 
the entire method and tenor of his teaching. 

Ha.d what been his aim ? The reference is to pronouncing 
a verdict on the authority and age of the different parts of the 
Old Testament. But nobody pretends that such was his aim. 
We are inquiring whether he affirmed that Moses wrote the 
Pentateuch. We have never affirmed, and have never believed, 
that Jesus said anything about its age and its structure beyond 
what is involved in its authorship. Again we ask, why does 
so acute an author as Professor Driver continually evade the 
issue which he himself so clearly stated at the outset? 

His next remark is this : 

In no single instance, so far as we are aware, did he anticipate 
the results of scientific inquiry or historical research. 

Perhaps he did not, when scientific inquiry and historical 
research are properly conducted; but what has this remark to 
do with the question at issue ? Why did not Professor Driver 
say, In no single instance, so far as We are aware, did Jesus 



*rHE BOOK OF^ DEUTERONOMY. 283 

say who gave tlio law to Israel ? This would have been in point; 
but this he could not say. 
/Vgain our author says: 

The aim of His teaching was a religious one; it was to set before 
men the pattern of a perfect life, to move them to imitate it, to bring 
them to himself. 

Very good ; but did he not, in doing this, rebuke men for not 
keeping the law which he said Moses gave them, and for not 
believing the writings of Moses in w-hom they put their trust 1 
Why continue thus tO' evade the issue by irrelevant remarks ? 

In the next sentence we find an indirect admission of the 
truth, with an attempt to break its f ofrcei : 

He accepted, as the basis of his teaching, the opinions of the Old 
Testament current around him. He assumed, in his allusions to it, 
the premises which his opponents recognized, and which could not have 
been questioned (even had it been necessary to question them) without 
raising issues for which the time was not yet ripe, and which, had 
they been raised, would have interfered seriously with the paramount 
purpose of his life. 

Strip this sentence of its ambiguity, and what does it mean ? 
It means that Jesus accepted as the basis of his teaching the 
opinion, among others, that Moses was the author of the law. 
Did he accept as the basis of his teaching an opinion w^hich he 
knew to be false ? He certainly did if Moses was not the 
author of the law. It means that ^^he assumed," in his allu- 
sions to the law, "the premises which his opponents recognized.^' 
Did he assume premises which he knew to be false ? So Pro- 
fessor Driver must think; for he thinks that the assumption 
of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is a false assump- 
tion, yet he holds Jesus guilty of that assnmption. 

The additional assertion in the last quotation, that these 
opinions which he accepted could not have been questioned with- 
out raising issues fo-r wiiich the time w^as not ripe, is of no 
force whate\^er ; for, as I have said before, Jesus did raise issues 
for which the time was not ripe, for some of which he was 
persecuted, and for one of which he w^as crucified. He knew 
nothing of that time-serving policy which accepts false opinions 
and makes false assumptions to avoid conflicts which the fear^ 



§84 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

less utterance of the trutli would involve-. Moreover, our con* 
tention is not that he should have corrected the opinion, sup* 
posing it to be false, thatMoses wrote the Pentateuch, but that 
he would not and could not affirm the truth of that opinion, 
knowing it to be false. That he did affirm it, I have abun- 
dantly proved. 

In order to fully represent Professor Driver's discussion of 
this issue, I must, make one more quotation which I have already 
made use of in a former connection. He says ; 

There is no record of the question, whether a particular portion 
of the Old Testament was written by Moses or David or Isaiah, having 
ever been submitted to him, and, had it been submitted, we have no 
means of knowing what his answer would have been. 

As we have said before, the first of these two assertions is 
true ; but it makes all the more significant the fact that, without 
a question being submitted, he volunteered to affirm that Da,vid 
wrote the 110th Psalm, and that Moses gave the law. As to 
his last assertion, nothing that Professor Driver says in this 
whole discussion is wilder. When Jesus said, "Did not Moses 
give you the law, and yet none of you has kept it?" does not 
this indicate what his answer would have been if one of his 
hearers had asked him, "Did Moses give us the law ?" ? And 
when he said to another company of Jews, "If you do not be- 
lieve his [Moses'] writings, how can ye believe my words ?" does 
this give no indication of what answer he would have given had 
one asked him, "Do you then believe that these writings came 
from Moses ?" ? 

In conclusion, I ask the reader, how can you account for 
this evasive and irrelevant method, on the part of so learned 
and logical an author as Professor Driver, in discussing so sim- 
ple a question? When he has an open path before him his 
reasoning is clear and cogent. He walks with a steady step, 
like a strong man on solid ground. Why, then, this faltering 
and wandering when he comes to discusssing the affirmations 
of Jesus respecting the Old Testament? Why does the strong 
man here betray such weakness ? Why but because he here felt 
conscious of the weakness of his cause ? 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 285 

In Biblical Study, the most elaborate work written by Prof. 
Charles A. Briggs, a whole chapter is devoted to "The J^ew 
Testament View of Old Testament Literature," and we shall 
now see more fully how he deals with the utterances of Jesus 
on the subject. 

On page 192 he says: "Jesus speaks of the law of Moses 

(John vii. 23) and the book of Moses (Mark xii. 26)." He 

cites several other passages from Luke and Paul, and then adds: 

These are all cases of naming books cited. They have as their 
parallel David as the name of the Psalter in Heb. iv. 7 and Acts iv. 25; 
Samuel, also of the Book of Samuel, Acts iii. 24. It is certainly reason- 
able to interpret Moses in these passages in the samQ. way as the name 
of the work containing his legislation and the history in which he is 
the central figure. 

We can judge of the correctness of these remarks only by 
seeing what is said in the passages cited. The first reads thus : 
^^If a man receiveth circumcision on the sabbath, that the law 
of Moses be not broken, are ye wroth, with me because I made 
a man everj whit whole on the sabbath ?" Is this a mere case 
of "naming'^ a book ? There is nothing said of the book Cuxcept 
by implication ; but there is something said of a law, and it is 
called "the law of Moses." If Jesus did not mean to commit 
himself to the fact that this law was given by Moses, how easily 
he could have avoided doing so by saying that the law might 
not be broken. In the next preceding verse Jesus makes a 
statement preparatory to this, in which he recognizes as real the 
exact relation of this law to circumcision which is set forth in 
the Pentateuch. He says: "Por this cause hath Moses giveia 
you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers) ; 
and on the sabbath ye circumcise a man." Here the fact that 
circumcision was first ordained in the time of the fathers, and 
not originated in the legislation of Moses, is set forth precisely 
as in our Pentateuch, and Moses is again credited with the 
legislation. It would be interesting to hear from Professor 
Briggs the reason why he deals thus with this passage. Had 
be quoted it, instead of merely citing it, he would scarcely have 
impugned the intelligence of his readers by using it as he doesu 



286 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

The second passage reads thus : "As toaiching the dead, that 
they are raised, have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the 
place concerning the bush, how God spake to him, saying, I am 
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob?" This is the naming of a book, or, more properly 
speaking, it is calling a book by its name ; but it is more : it 
is the recognition of that name as a proper one; for if Jesus 
had not known that Moses was the author of the book, we can 
not believe that he would have confirmed the mistaken beiief of 
his hearers by so styling it. How easily he could have avoided 
this, and still made his reference explicit, by saying, "The book 
of the law." These two passages confirm the testimony which 
they are employed to invalidate, by showing that Jesus indorsed 
the belief that Moses was the author of the book ascribed to 
him by the Jews. 

But Professor Briggs tries still further toi escape from this 
conclusion by citing alleged parallels in the use of the names 
of David and Samuel. As to David, the language of the text 
is this: "Saying in David, after soi long a time, To-day, as it 
hath been before said, To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden 
not your hearts." What right has Professor Briggs to say that 
the name "David" is here; used "as the name of the Psalter" ? 
The writer quotes from David, but not from the book of David, 
as Jesus quotes from "the book of Moses." The Jews knew 
no book of David. Their book of Psalms, like our own, con- 
tained some compositions ascribed to David, some to other 
writers, and many tO' no particular author. No Jew who had 
ever read the book through could have supposed that David 
wrote them all. When they quoted David, then, they quoted 
same Psialm which they supposed to have been written by 
David; and this passage in Hebrews assumes only that David 
wrote the Psalm from which the quotation is made. 

The professor's remark about Samuel, just quoted above^ 
has reference to an argument advanced by him on a previous 
page, and one which I believe to be original with him. He 
makes much use of it, and it is worthy, on this account^ of par- 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 287 

ticular notice. On pagei 190 the author quotes the words of 
Peter, ''All the prophets, from Saanuel and them that followed 
after, as many as have spoken, they also told of these days;" 
and he adds : 

The reference here is to the Book of Samuel, for the reason that 
there is no Messianic prophecy ascribed to Samuel in the Old Testa- 
ment. The context forces us to think of such an one. We find it in 
the prophecy of Nathan in the Book of Samuel. These historical books 
then bore the name of Samuel, and their contents are referred to 
as Samuel's. 

This is an ingenious piece of argumentation; but it is 
marked by two fatal defects. First, it assumes as a fact that 
''these historical books then bore the name of Samuel," where'as 
they bore no name in the Hebre^v text ; they were styled the first 
and second books of Kingdoms in the Septuagint ; and they were 
never called the first and second books of Samuel till A. D. 
1488, when they were so styled in Bomberg's printed Hebrew 
Bible. Such a blunder is a severe satire on an expert in his- 
torical criticism, and to base a boasted original argument on 
it is not a brilliant illustration of the "scientific method." This 
fact demolishes the foundation of the argu'ment. Furthermore, 
if it is true that no Messianic prophecy is ascribed to Samuel in 
the Old Testament, the fact that one is ascribed to him in the 
iN'ew Testament ought to satisfy a, man who believes in Christ 
and in the inspiration of his apostles. When Peter said that 
Samuel prophesied of the days of Christ, we ought to presume 
that Peter knew what he was talking about. 

The second argument by Professor Briggs is expressed in 

the following paragraph : 

Jesus represents Moses as a lawgiver, giving the Ten Command- 
ments (Mark vii. 10), the law of the leper's offering (Mark i. 44, etc.), 
the law of divorce (Matt. xix. 7), the law in general (John vii. 19). 
The Epistle to the Hebrews represents Moses as giving the law of 
priesthood (Heb. vii. 14), and as a lawgiver whose law, when issued at 
the time, could not be disobeyed with impunity (Heb. x. 28). These 
passages all represent Moses to be the lawgiver that he appears to be 
in the narratives of the Pentateuch, but do not by any means imply 
the authorship of the narratives that contain these laws, any more 
than the reference in I. Cor. ix. 14 to the command of Jesus in Luke 
X. 7, and the institution of the Lord's Supper by Jesus (L Cor. xi. 23), 
Imply that he was the author of the Gospels containing his words 
(Bil). Study, p. 193). 



288 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Here, again, in the citations from Jesus, he hides among 
a number of saying's of the Master, which, taken apart, from 
others, are not specific afiirmations of the authorship in ques- 
tion, one that is ; viz. : the interrogation in John vii. 19, "Did 
not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law ?" 
Why did not the professor single out this passage, as his oppo- 
nents have done, and show that it does not affirm the Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch? If he could show that in the 
minds and speech of the Jews addressed by Jesus there was a 
distinction between the "law" and what we call the Pentateuch, 
he would have met the argument in part. But even then he 
would have had to show that Christ meant not the law as a 
whole, but only that nucleus of the law which critics ascribe 
to Moses, as distinguished from the civil law in Deuteronomy, 
and the Levitical law, both of which, as he himself affirms, 
w^ere given by unknown persons many centuries after the death 
of Moses. Even what he does make out of the passage, that 
Moses gave "the law in general," contradicts his O'wn conclu- 
sions and those of all the critics with whom he stands. 

There is another anomaly in these citations froiji Jesus. 
Because Jesus says, in Mark vii. 10, "Moses said. Honor thy 
fathcT and mother," the professor says that Jesus, in these 
words, represents Moses as giving the Ten Commandments. 
Why this conclusion ? Why not reason as he does about other 
remarks of the same kind^ and say. This does not represent 
Moses as giving the whole of the Ten Commandments, "not 
by any means ;" it shows only that he gave the one about honor- 
ing father and mother. Well, it suits the theory to admit that 
Moses gave the Decalogue, and so the mode of reasoning which 
is scientific and conclusive in analogous cases is tossed aside 
in this. 

If Heb. vii. 14, as is asserted above, represents Moses as 
giving the law of priesthood, this contradicts the accepted crit- 
ical theory of the priesthood ; for it is claimed that there was 
no law of the priesthood till long after Moses; that Ezekiel 
foreshadowed it, and that it was first made a law in the time of 
Ezra; or a short time previous. The passage reads thus: "Eor 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 28^ 

it is evident that our Lord liath sprung out of Judali; as to 
which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests." The 
writer's argTiment assumes that if Moses spake nothing as 
respects priesthood in a certain tribe, then a man of that tribe 
could not be a priest. What more positive implication could 
we have that the law of the priesthood was all given by Moses, 
and not by an unkno^vn priestly writer (P) a thousand 3^ears 
after the death of Moses ? 

The passage cited from Heb. x. 28 reads: "A man that hath 
set at nought Moses' law dieth without compassion on the word 
of two or three witnesses." This shows that all the statutes 
with the death penalty attached came from Moses. But these 
are scattered all through the Pentiateuch, intermingled with the 
others too closely to be separated. Immediately after these 
citations the professor inadvertently gives his whole cause away, 
by saying: "These passages all represent Moses to be the law^ 
giver that he appears to bei in the narratives of the Pentateuch." 
But in the narratives of the Pentateuch Moses is represented as 
receiving from God and giving to the people every single statute 
of the law, both civil and religious. These passages, then, 
either misrepresent Moses, or the critical theory of the origin 
of the law is false, according to Professor Briggs' own repre- 
sentation. 

But the professor, not perceiving how completely he had 
given away his cause, makes the argument that while these passr 
ages prove Moses to be the lawgiver that he appears to be in 
the Pentateoich, they do not imply his authorship of the narra- 
tives that contain these laws, any more than Paul's allusions to 
teachings of Christ found in Luke's Gospel prove that Jesus 
wrote this Gospel. The conclusion does not follow, because the 
cases are not parallel. The author of this Gospel starts out 
with an explicit statement of his reason for writing in which 
he distinguishes between himself and Jesus. Secondly, no man 
among those to whom Paul wrote was laboring under the im- 
pression that Jesus wrote that Gospel, but all the readers to 
whom he and the other apostles wrote believed that Moses wrote 
the Irw, and ihey necessarily understood allusions to its author- 



^90 TH^ AUTHORSHIP OF 

ship accordingly. Finally, when Paul wrote First Corinthians, 
Luke's Gospel was not yet in existencei, and it is absurd to speak 
of Paul's making allusions to it. It was written several years 
later, and soinae of the professor's fellow critics place' it at least 
twenty years later. He knows this perfectly well; but in his 
eagerness to make a point he ignored it and committed, this 
absurdity. This is more inexcusable than the mistake about 
Samuel. 

I now take up his third argument on these testimonies. 
He says: 

Jesus represents Moses as a prophet who wrote of him (John v. 6); 
so Philip (John i. 45) ; Peter (Acts iii. 22-24) ; Stephen (Acts vii. 37) ; 
Paul (Acts xxvi. 22); and in Rom. x. 5-19 the apostle refers to the 
address in Deuteronomy xxx. and the song in Deuteronomy xxxii. 
These passages maintain that certain prophecies came from Moses, but 
do not maintain that the Pentateuch, as a whole, or the narratives in 
which these prophecies occur, were written by Moses. 

Here, again, the professor takes one of the most explicit 
of the testimonies of Jesus, and, instead of attempting, in a 
direct 'manner, tO' refute the argument, thati is based upon it, 
mixes it up with a. number of less, explicit passages, and tosses 
them all aside as ascribing only certain prophecies to Moses. 
The passage thus treated can be styled a mere ascription of a 
certain prophecy to Moses only by ignoring an essential part 
of it. It reads thus: 'Toir if ye believed Moses, ye wO'uld 
believe me, for he wrotei of me. But if ye believe not. his 
writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" "His writings !" 
What were meant by these? What writings did his hearers 
necessarily understand him to mean ? There is no answei* but 
one; he meant those writings known to his hearers and to us 
as the writings of Moses. He meant the Pentateuch; and I 
venture to say that Professo^r Briggs can not squarely face 
these words and deny it. He was not ignorant of these words 
when he wrote his book; why did he not face them squarely, 
and show, if he could, that they have a meaning consistent 
with his theory ? I should be glad to see him or some of his 
friends undertake the task even now. I invite them to it 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 291 

The true method, of treating all the sayings of Jesus and 
the apostles on this subject is to ascertain from some unambig- 
uous utterances precisely what they taught, and then to inter- 
pret their other utterances in harmony with these. This I 
have endeavored to do; and by this process it is made clear 
that, when they speak of any law, statute, prediction, or other 
sayings of Moses, they contemplate it as a. part of the ^^-riting 
theoi and since ascribed to Moses ; i. e., the Pentateuch. 

Ten years later than the publication of Biblical Study, 
the work from which I have copied Professor Briggs' argu- 
ments thus far, he published a smaller book entitled Higher 
Criticism of the Pentateuch, in which he goes over the same 
ground ag-ain. In it he reproduces, word for word, the three 
arguments on which I have commented ; but he has some addi- 
tional matter to which, in justice to him, I should perhaps pay 
attention. 

But some one will say, Was it not the common opinion in the days 
of our Lord that Moses wrote the Pentateuch? We answer that, so far 
as we know, it was the common opinion that David wrote the Psalter. 
As to the Pentateuch, opinion was divided whether it was lost when the 
temple was destroyed by the king of Babylon, and restored or recast 
by Ezra or not (p, 28). 

What kind of reasoning is this ? He answers the question 
whether the Jews thought that Moses wrote the Pentateuch 
by stating that, ''so far as we know, they thought that David 
wrote the Psalter." If I were asked, Has it not been the com- 
mon opinion that Professor Briggs wrote Biblical Study, and 
were to answer. So far as we know, it was once the common 
opinion that Shakespeare wrote Mother Gooseys Melodies, the 
answer would be equally relevant. "So far as we know-^' is 
well put in. It means tbat we know nothing about it But we 
do know that no Jew of common sense who ever read the Psal- 
ter could have thought that David wrote the whole of it. And 
we do know, and Professor Briggs knows we know, that the 
Jew^s of our Lord's Day believed Moses to be the author of the 
Pentateuch. Even those who thought that the law was lost 
for a time and then restored by Ezra, if any of them lived 
this early, believed that it was originally written by Moses. 



292 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

Following this ori the same page, the professor demands, 
■^'Why should we interpret Jesus and his apostles by the opin- 
ions of the Jews of his time ?" This question is easily an- 
swered. If I should step into the professor's classroom some 
day, and find him quoting to a class the Epistle to the He- 
brews, and constantly saying with every quotation, Paul says 
this, and Paul says that, I might demand of him, "Professor, 
do you not know that all the members of this class have fallen 
into the mistake that Paul wrote this epistle? And a.re you 
not confirming them in this false opinion by quoting it as 
Paul's ?" I suppose he would turn upon 'me with indignation, 
and demand, "Why should I be interpreted by the opinions of 
this clasis?'' Were I bold enough, my reply would be, "Why 
are you deceiving this class by propagating an opinion that 
you hold to be false V^ This is the attitude in which his argu- 
ment places Jesus. 

He says on th© samie page: 

If we should say that Jesus did not know whether Moses wrote the 
Pentateuch or not, we would not go beyond his own saying that he 
knew noi the time of his own advent. 

This is as much as tO' say, that because Jesus says of him- 
self that he did not know a certain thing, we may say of him 
that he did not know another and very different thing. Bet- 
cause Professoir Briggs says that he does not know the day and 
hour when he will die, I may say of him that he does not 
know who his grandmother was. I rathecr think that he did 
not know anything about logic when he was writing this sen- 
tence. All that he ever knew of logic, like E'ebuchadnezza.r's 
dream, has passed from him fo'r the time being. 

One more quotation, taken from page 29, will bring us to 

the end of the professor's strange series of arguments, or, 

rather, of stateiments: 

If, on the other hand, any one should say, Jesus must have known 
all things, and he ought not to have used language that might deceive 
men, we respond, that his language does not deceive men. Literary 
usage in all ages and in the Bible itself shows that it is equally truth 
and good language for the critics and the anti-critics. The question is, 
Shall we interpret the language of Jesus by the opinions of his contem- 
poraries? This we deny. Jesus was not obliged to correct all the 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 293 

errors of his contemporaries. He did not correct their false views of 
science. He was the great Physician, but he did not teach medicine. 
He was greater than Solomon, and yet he declined to decide questions 
of civil law and politics. He never rebuked slavery. Is he responsible 
for slavery on that account? The Southern slaveholders used to say so. 
But even they are now convinced of their error. 

Let us take up this string of assertioins, and see what is 
in them. First, "His language does not deceive men." True, 
if Moses "gave the law/' and if the books of the Pentateuch 
were "his writings/' as Jesus positively affirms; but false if 
these writings, as ProfessoT Briggs teaches, wcTe ^vritten se\^- 
eral centuries after Moses died. Second, "Jesus was not 
obliged to correct all the errors of his contemporaries." But 
nobody ever said that he was. We only say that he did not 
and would not affirm as truths any of their erro^rs. Third, 
"He did not correct any of their false views of science." Of 
course not ; but if he had affirmed any of them, as he affirmed 
their view of the authorship of the Pentateuch, we should 
never have heard the last of it from the lips of infidels; and 
Professor Briggs would have been unable toi defend him. 
Fourth, "He was a great Physician, but he did not teach med- 
icine." True; but suppose he had taught the false medical 
notions of his day, what would all of our M. D.'s of the pres- 
ent day have had to say ? Suppose he had taught what some 
people now call Christian Science! Fifth, "He declined to 
decide questions of civil law and politics." Yes; but suppose 
he had decided them. Suppose he had decided in favor of 
free silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 ; what would the gold-bugs 
have to say ? And what a plank his decision would have been 
in the Democratic platfor>m ! Sixth, "He never rebuked sla- 
ver}-. Is he responsible for slavery on that account?" Of 
course not; and the Southern slaveholders never said he was. 
They only said what Professor Briggs says, that he never rer 
buked it But suppose he had said that slavery was right, just 
as he said that Moses gave the law; what then? How then 
could Professor Briggs have said that slavery was wrong ? And 
how can he now say that Moses did not give the law? Pie 



294 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

could have said the former only by denying the authority of 
Jesus, and this is the only way in which he can say the latter. 
5. Did the Apostles Affirm ? We have seen, in the preced- 
ing section, that Jesus our Lord most positively and explicitly 
affirmed the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. For proof 
of the fact that Moses was its author we need to go no further, 
for vdth believers in Christ no other proof can make stronger 
an explicit assertion by him. But lest, in the mind of some 
reader, the explicitness of his affirmations has not been made 
perfectly clear, we proceed to show how his apostles expressed 
themselves, and to show in this way both what they were led 
by the Holy Spirit to say, and how they understood the utteir- 
ances on this subject of their divine Master. I am awa^re that 
with some persons who claim to attach full credit to the utter- 
ances of Christ, the testimony on such a question given by the 
apostles has little or no weight. The cry ^^Back to Christ," 
w^hioh has been of late shouted so vociferously, is by some, 
whose shout is the loudest, meant not only for the disregard 
of all authority this side of the 'New Testament., but of apos- 
tolic authority as well. It means that nothing in the ^eiw 
Testament is to be regarded by them as authoritative except 
the personal utterances of Jesus himself. It means that evem 
these are not to be regarded as authority until the repoirts 
of them in our Gospels pass through the crucible of "modern 
criticism,'' to determine whether they have been faithfully de- 
livered. But this professed exaltation of Christ is in reality 
a disparagement of him; for it is his own authority which 
affirms the authority of his apostles, promising them infalli- 
ble guidance, and saying to them, "He that receiveth me receiv- 
eth him that sent me.". On this point I am glad to quote 
again an utterance by Professor Briggs, who says : "The author- 
ity of Jesus Christ to all who know him to be their divine Sa- 
viour, outweighs all other authority whatever. A Christian 
man must follow his teachings in all things as the guide into 
all truth. The authority of Jesus Christ is involved in that 
of the apostles." No man who accepts this dictum can think 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 295 

of making the distinction of which, we speak ; and no man who 
credits what Jesus sajs about the inspiration of the apostles, 
or regards what they say of their own inspiration as any- 
thing more than idle boasting, can call this dictum in quesr 
tion. We proceed, then, to cite the testimony of the apostles 
with full confidence that it will be implicitly credited by all 
but rationalists. 

The apostle Peter shall be our first witness. In his sec- 
ond recorded sei-mon, he says: '^Moses indeed said, A prophet 
shail the Lord God raise up unto you from among your breth- 
ren, like unto me ; to him shall ye hearken in all things what- 
soever ho shall speak unto you. And it shall be, that every 
soul, which shall not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly 
destroyed from among the people.'' This is a free extract 
from Deuteronomy (xviii. 15-19) ; and Peter testifies that it 
was spoken by Moses. It is part of one of the speeches 
ascribed to Moses in that book. It is conceded that Peter's 
hearei-s credited the whole speech and the whole Book of Deu- 
teronomy as having come from Moses; and as Peter uses the 
passage to show them that Moses predicted the coming of Jesus, 
his argument was both fallacious in itself, and deceptive to his 
hearers, if the book had any other origin. Xo ingenuity can 
set aside this conclusion or destroy the force of it. 

Our next witness is the apostle John. In the first chap- 
ter of his Gospel, after setting forth the pre^existence and the 
advent of Jesus, and quoting a brief testimonial from John 
the Baptist, he says : "The law was given by Moses ; grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ^" Here is the same testimony 
given by Jesus himself in a slightly different form. It is a 
positive affirmation that the law was given by Moses; and the 
person of Moses as the giver of the law is put in antithesis 
^\dth the person of Christ as the bestower of grace and tnith. 
Xotiee, further, it is not some particular law or statute that 
is spoken of, but "the law" — an expression which always in 
the speech of the Jews meant the work which we call the Pen- 
tateuch. John, then, was mistaken, and he misleads the read- 



296 THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

ers of his Go>spel, whether Jews or Gentiles, if the Pentateuch 
did not came from the hand of Moses. 

The testimony of Paul is equally explicit. I shall use only 
one testimonial from him. In contrasting the righteousness 
of the law with that obtained thro-ugh faith in Christ, he 
says: 'Tor Moses writeth that the man that doeth the right- 
eousness which is of the law shall live thereby.'' Here Moses- 
is represented as the writer; and what he is said to have writ- 
t-en is not some particular sentence; for the words Paul uses 
are not found in the Pentateuch, but they set forth the sub- 
stance of what Moses taught in reference to righteousness and 
the life w^hich it secures. It is, t<hen, an assertion that the 
law in general was written by Moses, and, in arguing thus to 
Jewish readers whom he had especially in mind, Paul must 
be understood as using the term in the sense ascribed tO' it by 
the Jews. It is an assertion that Moses was the writer of the 
law, as explicit as the asseirtion by John that Moses gave the 
law. 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who', I confi- 
dently believe, after having studied all the arguments to the 
contrary, was Paul, makes a greater number of assertions of 
the Mosaic authorship than any other N^ew Testament writer, 
and with those who believe that this epistle had an inspired 
source, the authority of its author' is not inferior to that of 
Peter and John. But if any question can be settled by the 
authority of inspired apostles, this one is already settled by the 
statements of Peter, John and Paul. 

§11. CoisrcLusiois^ 

In drawing this discussion to a close, it seems proper to 
state, in a summar)^ form, what the author seems to himself 
to have accomplished. 

After stating in the introduction the position of the par- 
ties to the discussion, and the exact issue between them, we 
have taken up, one by one, all of the evidences, from whatever 
source derived, which have been relied upon by the friends of 
the analytical theory as decisive proof of the late date which 



THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY. 297 

they assign to the Book of Deuteronomy, and have carefully 
considered their merits. We have presented these evidences 
in the words of such scholars as have set them forth in their 
most convincing forms. We have not knowingly failed to pre- 
sent the argaunents by which these evidences are enforced, in 
their full strength. We have aimed to look at them from every 
point of view\ We have dealt with them as an antagonist, but 
not^ as the author knows himself, with the desire or the will- 
ingness to take any unfair advantage of them. The subject has 
been on the author's mind as a subject of serious thought, and 
during long periods a subject of absorbing thought, for more 
tJian forty years. jSTothing of special importance that has been 
w^ritten on either side in that time has escaped his notice. He 
considers himself, therefore, competent to express a judgment 
on the course of the argumentation, and be can not feel that 
he is egotistic in expressing the conviction that he has refuted 
in Part First of this work all of the arguments supposed to 
be decisive in support of the so-called critical theory of Deute- 
ronomy. That the final decision of believing scholars will be 
against that tbeory he can not doubt. 

On the other hand, while the array of evidence in proof 
of the Mosaic authorship which has been presented, is not ex- 
haustive, the author feels thorofughly convinced of its conclu- 
siveness; and he will hereafter, as heretofore, implicitly trust 
the representation which the book makes of itself, and which 
is made of it by our Lord and his inspired apostles. I can 
afford to believe what the apostles believed, what Jesus be- 
lieved, and be satisfied. Humbly trusting that this product of 
my profoundest study and my maturest years may be' blessed 
of God to help my readers into the same satisfaction, I now, 
wdth a sigh of relief from a severe and long-continued mental 
strain, commit my w^ork to the fate which the Disposer of all 
tilings has prepared for it. 



INDEX 



Ahaz, his heathen altar, 163. 

Altar of the two and a half tribes, 220. 

Altar at Mt. Ebal, 225. 

Amalek, the decree against, 202. 

Ammon, Moab and Edom, 204. 

Amos, his relation to calf-worship, 171, 
253. 

Antiquarian notes in Deuteronomy, 
114. 

Apostles, did they affirm the Mosaic 
authorship? 294; did Peter? 295; 
did John? 295; did Paul? 296. 

Assertions of authorship in Deuteron- 
omy, 195, 197, 198. 

*'At that time," argument from, 112. 

Authority of Christ on the subject, 265. 

B. 

"Beyond Jordan," argument from, 

106. 
Blessing and cursing, 125. 
Blessings of the tribes, 132. 
Bochim, sacrifice at, 35, 141; a back 

reference to Exodus, Leviticus and 

Deuteronomy, 229. 
Book of the covenant, its altar and 

sacrifice, 185. 
Briggs, Prof., on Samson, 231. 



Canaanites, decree of extermination, 
203, 219. 

Children of murderers spared, 252. 

Chronicles set aside, 138. 

Cities of refuge, 97, 227. 

Claim of authorship in the title, 195. 

Contradictions as to financial condition 
of the Levites, 55 ; as to tithes, 63 ; 
as to the peace-offerings, 67; as to 
the Passover sacrifices, 68; as to 
the flesh of animals not slaughtered, 
69 ; as to Hebrew bondservants, 71 ; 
as to the Decalogue, 78 ; as to move- 
ments of Moses at Mt. Sinai, 83; 
as to the time of making the ark, 



85; as to the mission of the spies, 
88; as to the sojourn at Kadesh, 91 ; 
as to the consecration of the Le- 
vites, 94 ; as to the cities of refuge, 
97; as to the year of release, 99; as 
to eating firstlings and tithes, 100; 
as to the wilderness itinerary, 104. 
Criticism, proper method of, iv. 

D. 

Date of Deuteronomy, vii. 

David, did he officiate as a priest? 

152; priesthood of his sons, 153, 
Deborah's forty thousand, 233, note. 
Decalogue, its forms, 78. 
Deuteronomy, the key of the critical 

arch, xix. 
Deuteronomy a " reformulation of old 

laws," 214. 
Dishonest motives on part of D, 215 
Documents J and E, viii. 
Document H, x. 
Document P, x. 

Documents distinguished, how, xi. 
Doom of the Gibeonites, 226, 233, note. 

Elijah and Elisha, 169. 

Elkanah's feast, 145. 

Ezra's book our Pentateuch, 139. 

F. 

False prophets abounding, 123. 
Foreign guards in the temple, 160. 
Fraud, the question of, 209 ; the charge 
admitted, 210 ; the charge denied, 212. 



Gideon's altar, 36, 142 : his ephod. 235. 

H. 

Hexateuch, xiv. 

High places, in Judah, 46; in Israel, 

47, 155; Solomon's relation to, 156, 

165; their condemnation, 248, 260. 
Hosea, his relation to calf -worship, 

175 ; his knowledge of the law, 176 ; 

his 10,000 precepts, 180. 



300 



INDEX, 



Hilkiah's book, was it the Penta- 
teuch, or only Deuteronomy? 1, 
4-16; when written, 17-24; how its 
reception accounted for, 24-28. 

Historicity of Pentateuch, xii, xiv. 

Host of heaven, when worshiped, 121. 

I. 

Infidel sources of analytical theory of 
Pentateuch, xvi. 

Infidel tendency of analytical theory, 
xvii ; its effect in Germany, xviii. 

Indirect testimony as to authorship 
of Deuteronomy, 200. 

Inspiration of Deuteronomy, 216. 

Isaiah's philippic, 180. 

Isaiah's knowledge of Deuteronomy, 
256, 259; of the other law-books, 
258, 261, 262. 

J. 

Jehovah's charge to Joshua, 218. 

Jephthah's vow, 142. 

Jeremiah on sacrifices, 184. 

Jericho, its property "devoted," 223. 

Jesus, his authority in criticism, 264, 
265; did he know the facts? 266; 
bearing of the Kenosis, 267 ; bearing 
of his ignorance of the day and 
hour, 268 ; did he affirm the Mosaic 
authorship? 269, 277, 285; Prof. 
Briggs on this issue, 270, 276; Prof. 
Driver on the same, 273, 274, 281 ; 
Prof. Cheyne on the same, 274. 

Joshua, Book of, set aside, 137, 228. 

Jubile, release from bondage, 76. 

Judges, Book of, Levitically false, 141, 
143. 

K. 

Kadesh of Napthali, alleged sanctu- 
ary at, 142. 

Kadesh-Barnea, sojourn of Israel at, 91. 

L. 

Landmarks, 124. 

Law of the kingdom, 115, 157. 

Law of evidence as to authorship, 195. 

Levitical cities, 228. 

Levitical law known to Amos, 254. 

Levitical law known to Hosea, 255. 



Peace-offerings, 232. 

Pillar to Jehovah in Egypt, 20. 

Plan of the be ok, xx. 



Predictions in Deuteronomy, 205. 
"Priests and Levites," 49. 
Priests disqualified by Josiah, 53. 
Priesthood in book of the covenant, 53. 
Proper method of criticism, iv. 
Prophetic teaching of Deuteronomy, 

122. 
Prophets, the early, and sacrifice, 169. 

R. 

Ryle's canon of Old Testament, 1. 

S. 

Samuel's offerings, 38; was he a 
priest? 150. 

Saul's offering at Gilgal, 38, 152. 

Shechem, sanctuary at, 37. 

Shiloh, ritual at, 144, 147, 150, 236, 242. 

Single sanctuary, was it an innova- 
tion? 29-34. 

Solomon, his worship at high places, 
155; his new shrines, 156; his pil- 
lars, 158 ; did he officiate at the 
altar? 158; his temple ritual, 159; 
his deposition of Abiathar, 164 ; his 
forbidden marriages, 164. 

Song of Moses, 127. 

Speeches in historical books, 213. 

Spies, the mission of, 88. 

Style of Deuteronomy, 121, 190. 

Supreme tribunal, when instituted. 



119. 



T. 



Tabernacle, its location at Nob, 44; 
its location at Gibeon, 44; was it 
the structure at Shiloh? 148, 150, 
151, 236; its contents, 237; its ex- 
istence denied, 239. 

Tabernacles, feast of, 140, 146. 

Temple, Solomon's, to supersede the 
tabernacle, 244; its service exclu- 
sive, 247. 

Testimony, the, given to Joash, 251. 

Titles of parties in criticism, vi. 

Torah, the; what it was, 178, 254, 258. 

W. 
"When we came forth out of Egypt," 

argument from, 114. 
Worship restricted to Jerusalem, 254. 
Writing Deuteronomy, 198. 

z. 

Zadok, his ancestry, 164. 



SCRIPTURE REFEREl^CES. 



GENESIS. 


Page. 


LEVITICUS. 


Page. 


Chapter ix. 16 




258 


Chapter ii. 11 


255 


'* xxi. 13 




23 


iii 


232 


xxxi. 40,41,53 




23 


iv. 27 


183 


xxxiii. 18-22 




23 


" vi. 7 


18a 


XXXV. 14,20 




23 


vii 


232 


" xxxviii. 1-30 




137 


" vii. 9, 10 


256 


xlv. 5-8 




187 


vii. 13 


255 


EXODUS. 

Chapter iv. 10 

xii. 1-8; xii. 6, 18 

xiii. 5, 11 

xvi. 1-3 

• " xvii. 8-16 


.69, 


122 
241 
201 
241 
203 


xiv. 34 

xvii. 15, 16 

xix. 31 

XX. 6, 27 

XX. 27 

xxiii. 8 

xxiii. 10 


201 

70 

258 

258 

la 

69 

201 


-' xviii. 1 

xix 22,24 


54, 
15, 
49, 


54 

84 

169 
53 

185 


XXV. 2 

" XXV. 32, 33 ... 


201 

59 


'* xx.-xxiii. . . viii, xiii, 7 
16, 27, 
XX. 23 


" XXV. 44 

" XXV. 44^6 


229 

76 

10 


XX. 24,25 




xxvi. 30 


....249,250 


" xxi 4 




76 


xxvii«28, 29 


224 






" xxi. 7 

" xxii. 37 




V4 

69 

236 


xxvii. 30-33 

NUMBERS. 


6a 


" xxiii. 19 






" xxiii. 27, 33 




220 


Chapter vi 


230 


" xxiii. 32 




229 


X. 5-8 


95 


xxiv. 1-10 




viii 


xi. 18-22 


174 


" xxiv. 18 




86 


" xii. 1 


8a 


XXV. 10, 21 




86 


xii. 16 


9a 


" XXV. 22 




238 


xiii. 20 


93 


*' XXV. 22, 30, 37 




246 


XV. 1^1 


92,256 


" xxvii. 1-8 




32 


XV. 2, 18 


201 


xxvii. 20 




246 


xvi. 40, 41, 50 


201 


xxix. 28 




232 


xvii. 1-13 


201 


" XXX. 7-9, 17-21 




246 


xviii. 1-32 


201 


" xxxii. 7-9 




84 
85 


xix. 16 

XX. 1,22 


248 


xxxii. 31, 19 




94, 95 


*' xxxiii. 7-23 




86 
85 


xxii. 1 

'^ XXV. 30 


107 


" xxxiv. 1, 2 




30 


xxxiv. 1-4 




86 


xxviii 


256 


" xxxiv. 11-16 




164 


" xxix 


256 


' xxxiv. 22 




145 


'' xxxi. 25-47 


68 


" xxxiv. 26 




237 


'' xxxii. 19 


107 


" xxxvii. 1 




86 


xxxii. 38-40 


94 


*' xl. 17-21 




86 


" xxxiii 


9a 






301 



302 



SCRIPTURE REFERENCES. 



Page. 

Chapter xxxiii. 19 100 

xxxiii. 31-33 104 

xxxiii. 38 94 

xxxiii. 38-44 93 

xxxiii. 50-56 220 

xxxiii. 51 201 

xxxiv. 2 201 

xxxiv. 15 107 

XXXV. 1-8 227, 228 

XXXV. 10 201 

xxxvi. 13 218 



195 
196 



DEUTERONOMY. 

Chapter i. 1 

i.1,3 

i. 22, 23, 36, 38 88 

i. 37, 38....... 95 

i. 46-ii. 1 93, 94 

iii. 8 107^ 110 

iv. 8, 9 62 

iv. 16 253 

iv. 41-43 227 

iv. 44-49 197 

iv. 45 5 

V. 2, 3 187 

vi. 1,10, 18 200 

vii. 1 200 

vii. 1-3 164 

vii. 2 229 

viii. 1 200 

ix. 1 200 

ix. 17 84, 85 

X. 6, 7 104 

X. 11 200 

X. 12, 13 183 

xi. 29 200, 225 

xi. 30 107 

xii. 5,6 102» 186 

xii. 10 200 

xii. 12 58 

xii. 18 58 

xii. 19 58 

xiii. 12-18 221 

xiv. 21 70 

xiv. 22, 23 64 

xiv. 27 58 

xiv. 29 70 

XV. 17 74 

XV. 19 103 

xvi. 8 12 

xvi. 11, 14 58 

xvi. 18-20 73 

xvi. 22 21 



Page. 

Chapter xvii. 4 200 

xvii. 14-20 115 

" xvii. 18 58 

xvii. 18, 19 251 

xvii. 18-20 15 

'' xviii. 1 58 

" xviii. 3 67 

" xviii. 6-8 59 

" xviii. 9 200 

xviii. 10-12, 14^17 257 

xviii. 11 258 

" xviii. 15-19 255 

" xix. 1-13 98, 227 

" xix. 4 200 

" xix. 14 124 

" XX. 16-18 204, 220 

" XX. 16,17 224 

" xxi. 10-14 165 

" xxi. 11 200 

xxii. 3-7 204 

xxiii. 18 237 

" XXV. 8 58 

" XXV. 16 15 

" XXV. 19, 17-19 200, 204 

" xxvi. 11-13 58 

" xxvi 5 

" xxvii. 1-26, 1-14 197, 228 

xxvii. 14, 9 58 

" xxviii 298 

" xxviii. 1 200 

" xxviii. 36 205 

" xxviii. 37 9 

xxviii. 49-51, 53 126, 207 

" xxviii. 63-68 208 

" xxix 198 

" xxix. 1-13 6 

" xxix. 24 9 

" XXX 198 

" XXX. 1-5 208 

" XXX., xxxii 290 

" xxxi 198 

xxxi. 3, 13, 20 200 

" xxxi. 19,20,22 127 

" xxxi 24-26 3 

" xxxii. 40 96 

" xxxii. 44 128 

" xxxiv 199 

JOSHUA. 

Chapter i. 7,8 278 

" i. 8 15 

" iii. 3 50 

« V. 1 107 



SCRIPTURE REFERENCES. 



303 



Page. 

Chapter vi. 17, 18 223 

viii. 1-8 225 

viii 30-35 225 

ix 23,27 225 

•' xviii. 1 33 

xxi. 1-3 228 

xxii 220-223 

•• xxiii. 13 229 

JUDGES. 

Chapter ii. 1-3 229 

ii. 1-5 35 

vii.25 157 

" viii. 27 235 

xiii. 5,7 255 

xiii. 15-20 35 

xvi.1, 7 255 

" xvii 52 

xvii 233 

xviii 52 

" xviii. 30 234 

■ «' XX. 26,27 232 

" XX. 26-28 237 

" xxi. 4 232 

" xxi. 21 145 

xxi. 24 147 

I. SAMUEL. 

Chapter i. 3 40, 159 

i.7,8 236 

" i. 20, 21 145 

" ii. 15,22, 24 236 

♦' ii. 17 40 

ii. 18 235 

" ii. 22 239, 241 

iii. 3 236 

iii. 20 42 

iv. 4 238 

vi. 20-23 153 

" vii. 1 151 

" vii. a-9 42 

*' vii. 20 42 

" viii. 6-8 119 

" viii. 8 152 

♦' viii. 18 155 

X. 25 252 

" xii. 25 151 

" xiii. 6-12 119 

" xiii. 9-14 38 

" xiii. 15, 16 142 

" xiv. 1-3, 18, 19 152 

" xiv. 3 44 

" xiv. 4 no 



Page 

Chapter xiv. 35 38 

" xxi. 1-9 44 

•' xxi. 3-6 238 

" xxii. 18-23 44 

" xxii. 19 44 

II. SAMUEL. 

Chapter vi. 14 235 

" vi. 20-23 153 

vii.1-13 224 

viii. 18 155 

XV. 12, 32 33 

I. KINGS. 

Chapter ii. 3 15 

ii. 26 164 

V. 3-5 244 

" vi. 1 245 

*• viii. 1^, 64 245 

xi. 1, 2 160 

" xi. 7 247 

" xii. 26,29, 51 247 

" xii. 33 248 

" xiii. 2 248 

xiv. 28 160 

" xvi. 30, 31 170 

'* xxii. 1-6, 16 viii 

II. KINGS. 

Chapter xi. 12 251 

" xii. 2,3 166 

" xii. 16 163 

" xii. 20,21 252 

'* xiv. 5, 6 253 

" xiv. 6 15 

" xiv. 24 108 

" XV. 3 121 

*' xviii. 1-5 168 

" xviii. 3-6, 22 249 

" xviii. 6 18 

" xxiii. 2 6 

" xxiii. 25 7 

I. CHRONICLES. 

Chapter vi. 1-12 164 

XV. 11, 12 153 

xvi. 37^2 45 

" xviii. 17 155 

II. CHRONICLES. 

Chapter v. 5 50 

xi. 13, 14 58 

xi. 13-16 48 

" xix. 11 120 



304 



SCRIPTURE REFERENCES. 



Chapter xxiii. 18. 

'' XXX. 27.. 

xxxiv. 3. 



Page. 
. 50 
.. 50 
. 3 



139 



EZRA. 

Chapter viii. 36 

NEHEMTAH. 

Chapter viii. , ix 

PSALMS. 

Chapter xvi 274 

" ex 372 

ISAIAH. 

Chapter i. 10-15 185 

ii. 6-8 256 

viii. 19,20 257 

ix. 7 263 

xvii. 7,8 259 

xxiv. 5, 6 258 

xxiv. 13 261 

xxvii. 9 260 

xxxi. 3 118 

xxxvi. 9 118 

xl. 16 261 

xl.-xlviii. 263 

xlii. 21, 24 262 

xliii. 23-24 262 

Ixvi. 3 263 

JEREMIAH. 

Chapter vii. 12-14. 44 

viii. 8 261 

xi. 1,4 186 

xiv. 11,12 186 

xvii. 24-26 187 

xxxiv. 8-22 73 

xxxvi. 6-9 44 

HOSEA. 

Chapter iv. 6 127 

vi. 6 127 

viii. 11,12 127, 261 

AMOS. 

Chapter i. 2 253 

" ii. 4 253 

" ii. 11, 12 255 

" iii. 13,14 172 

" iv. 4, 5 172 

" iv. 5 255 

" V. 4-6 172 

" V. 22 256 



Page. 

Chapter vi. 6-8 182 

MATTHEW. 

Chapter ix. 13 177 

X. 34 188 

xii. 7 177 

XV. 1-9 261 

xix. 3-9 270 

xix. 7 287 

xxii. 41-46 278 

MARK. 

Chapter i. 44 287 

vii. 10 288 

xii. 26 275,285 

" xii. 35-37 273 



LUKE. 

Chapter xx. 41-44 



273 



JOHN. 

Chapter i. 17 295 

" i. 45 290 

" iii. 34 267 

V. 6 290 

" vi. 70 278 

" vii. 13 278, 287, 288 

" vii. 23 285 

" viii. 56, 58 268 

" xvii. 4, 5 268 

ACTS. 

Chapter iii. 22-24 290 

" iii. 22, 23 295 

" vii. 37 290 

" xxvi. 22 290 



ROMANS. 



Chapter x. 5 

X. 5-19. 



290 



I. CORLSTHIAXS. 

Chapter i. 13 278 

ii. 10 268 

" ix. 14 289 

" xi. 23 289 

HEBREWS. 

Chapter vii. 14 287, 288 



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